The covid-19 pandemic has pushed tens of millions of Americans to the brink of eviction, revealing a gaping hole in our social safety net. The Cares Act, a federal eviction moratorium, and state and local renter protections have thus far held back a catastrophic wave of eviction and homelessness. But this crisis is forcing policymakers to reckon with the systemic risks posed by widespread housing instability. Previous crises have prompted the creation of the “automatic stabilizers” we take for granted — such as unemployment insurance and nutritional assistance — which protect individuals and prevent broader economic collapse. In that vein, we propose a new federally funded, locally administered rental assistance program providing short-term emergency funds to keep people in their homes and reduce the costly collateral damage of forced moves, evictions and homelessness.
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A Renter Safety Net: A Call for Federal Emergency Rental Assistance
SUMMARY:
For decades, escalating housing costs have outpaced income growth for middle- and lower-income earners. As a result, millions of American households struggle to accumulate a savings buffer with the little income they have leftover after paying rent, and are therefore left vulnerable to evictions or forced moves when unexpected financial shocks occur. In this chapter, authors Ingrid Gould Ellen, Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Faculty Director of the NYU Furman Center, Amy Ganz, Deputy Director of the Economic Strategy Group, and Katherine O’Regan, Professor of Public Policy and Planning at NYU Wagner and Faculty Director of the NYU Furman Center, document the costly externalities that such housing instability poses and propose the creation of a Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program to provide one-time, short-term financial help to low-income renters who face unexpected financial shocks.
Although renters across the income spectrum now pay far more in rent than they did in 1970, the rising cost of rent has been particularly challenging for the lowest-income renters, given that the increase compounded pre-existing high levels of rent burden. By 2018, the authors estimate that nearly 82 percent of renters with incomes in the bottom fifth of American households paid more than 30 percent of their income on rent, and 61 percent paid more than half of their income in rent. Shrinking residual incomes mean that many rent-burdened households have a limited ability to accumulate savings and would struggle to absorb unexpected expenses or income losses.
Yet financial shocks occur frequently and may be important drivers of evictions or other forced moves. The authors emphasize that such housing instability is extremely costly, both for households and for society as a whole, and cite studies that show formal evictions elevate the risk of homelessness and long-term residential instability, and also increase the likelihood of emergency room use. However, as costly as they may be, forced moves appear relatively cheap to prevent. Emergency assistance can significantly reduce the likelihood of missed payments or eviction filings. To this point, Ellen, Ganz, and O’Regan note that donor preferences, social and fiscal externalities, and private benefits give political favor to housing assistance programs over simple cash transfers.
The authors propose the development of a short-term rental assistance program to address temporary income and expense volatility that can threaten housing stability. This tool would provide households with one-time emergency federal assistance covering rent, utilities, and other qualifying expenses in order to protect them against forced moves and evictions in the face of unexpected financial shocks. The program would be limited to renters with incomes of 80 percent of AMI or less prior to the income or expense shock, which balances the desire to target the very neediest households with the interest in serving somewhat high-income households, for whom short-term help is more likely to be sufficient to prevent a forced move.
Their federally-funded proposal complements current federal housing programs, many of which are ill-suited for addressing one-time financial shocks. Additionally, while intended to address idiosyncratic events in renters’ lives, the program could be modified and scaled up to mitigate harm during a common shock, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors state that the costs of such a program would be modest relative to the benefits of stabilizing low-income renters and avoiding the cascade of other social problems (and costs) that may follow from forced moves.
AESG Member Statement in Support of Immediate Pandemic Relief
Amidst a resurgence in COVID-19 caseloads and continuing economic devastation from the pandemic, we urge Congress to enact legislation that focuses on the core measures necessary to provide additional fiscal relief as quickly as possible and no later than the end of this calendar year.
A bipartisan relief package should include—first and foremost—additional funding to fight the virus. We also endorse assistance to individuals and families, including extended federal government income relief to unemployed individuals, enhanced benefits to households who need help buying food, and measures to help people who are facing potential eviction and homelessness because of pandemic-related income loss. Legislation should include fiscal support to state and local governments, which face budget shortfalls as a result of the pandemic while they face emergency spending needs, including much needed funding for K-12 schools to open safely. Congress should also prioritize support to small businesses, as they continue to operate under reduced capacity restrictions, weakened consumer demand, and a high level of uncertainty.
The CARES Act that was passed with bipartisan support in March 2020 provided necessary relief to millions of Americans and helped the economy rebound more quickly than expected. Many of the Act’s key provisions have already expired but are still needed. Meanwhile, the pandemic resurges throughout the country. Our nation’s leaders should act on another round of fiscal relief now. At the same time, the administration should act aggressively to deploy the unspent resources it already has to combat the virus and support businesses. Our country and economy cannot wait until 2021.
Signatories
Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
The Paulson Institute; Economic Strategy Group
Erskine Bowles
The University of North Carolina; Economic Strategy Group
Melissa S. Kearney
The University of Maryland; Economic Strategy Group
Ben Bernanke
Brookings Institution
Lanhee Chen
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Kenneth Chenault
General Catalyst
Dave Cote
Vertiv Holdings
James S. Crown
Henry Crown and Company
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.
Purdue University
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google Ventures
Diana Farrell
JPMorgan Chase Institute
Jason Furman
Harvard University
Timothy F. Geithner
Warburg Pincus
Austan D. Goolsbee
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
American Action Forum
Glenn Hubbard
Columbia Business School
Joel Kaplan
Facebook
Neel Kashkari
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Maya MacGuineas
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
N. Gregory Mankiw
Harvard University
Marc Morial
National Urban League
Janet Murguía
UnidosUS
Michael A. Nutter
Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
James W. Owens
Caterpillar
John Podesta
Center for American Progress
Ruth Porat
Alphabet and Google
James Poterba
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Penny Pritzker
PSP Partners
Bruce Reed
Civic LLC
Robert E. Rubin
Council on Foreign Relations
Margaret Spellings
Texas 2036
Robert K. Steel
Perella Weinberg Partners
Lawrence H. Summers
Harvard University
Mark Weinberger
EY
Thomas J. Wilson
The Allstate Corporation
Robert B. Zoellick
Brunswick Group
Bringing Jobs to People: Improving Local Economic Development Policies
SUMMARY:
Even before the current recession, local labor markets across the U.S. had large and persistent disparities in employment among prime-working age adults. Roughly 15 percent of the U.S. population, totaling 47 million people, lived in areas with employment rates at least 5 percentage points below the national average. In this Economic Strategy Group memo, author Timothy Bartik, Senior Economist at the W.E. UpJohn Institute for Employment Research, argues that large and persistent differences in employment rates across U.S. places highlight the need for local economic development policies to better promote cost-effective job creation in distressed areas.
State and local governments spend roughly $50 billion on economic development each year. Of this amount, $47 billion is spent on tax or other cash incentives for firms. Bartik argues local economic development policies can have large benefits by increasing long-run local employment rates. However, cash and tax incentives tend to be expensive, poorly targeted, and favor the largest firms, resulting in escalating costs due to competition among state and local governments. In Bartik’s view, incentives should be cut back. He argues that other local development policies, which provide businesses with customized public services, such as job training partnerships with community colleges and infrastructure development, are more cost-effective strategies for increasing long-run employment and worker productivity.
Economic development policies are most cost-effective when targeted to distressed areas, where the initial rate of employment is low. Bartik also explains that policies should be designed to promote local growth beyond the specific industries they target. Export-based industry targeting, in which firms employ workers in the local market but sell their products outside of that market, creates a multiplier effect in the local economy and avoids drawing business away from other local firms. In addition, assistance should be provided to a wide variety of industries and firms, rather than targeting only one locally dominant firm or industry.
Local political interests, lack of funding, and poorly designed policies often impede local governments from maximizing the net benefits of economic development policies. For example, most government institutions are not organized around local labor markets, which span local and sometimes state political boundaries. Because low-income areas tend to lack the funding and coordination needed for long-term investment policies, state or even federal interventions can help to maximize the benefits of such programs.
Bartik recommends state-level policy reforms to improve evaluation, promote local economic development planning, and direct resources to distressed areas. He also highlights two potential federal interventions. The first is capping the size of tax- or other large discretionary incentives awarded by state or local governments. Second, he proposes a new federal block-grant program that would be awarded to local labor markets that are 5 percentage points or more below the U.S. average in prime-age employment rates, for a 10-year period. He estimates this regional aid program would cost around $15 billion annually, or $150 billion over a decade.
The Faltering Escalator of Urban Opportunity
David Autor is the Ford Professor of Economics and Co-Chair of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future. This report was produced in collaboration with the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future.
SUMMARY:
Since 1980, college-educated workers have been steadily moving into affluent cities while non-college workers have been moving out. At the core of understanding why non-college workers (defined by author David Autor as workers without a bachelor’s degree) are no longer flocking to the cities is the question of push versus pull. Are economic forces—such as high housing costs—pushing non-college workers out of thriving cities that otherwise offer strong labor market opportunities? Or, are the opportunities offered by these places eroding—meaning that their pull is weakening? While the role of rising housing costs is widely recognized, this briefing presents evidence that employment and earnings opportunities for non-college educated workers in urban labor markets have substantially deteriorated over the past three decades.
The reversal of opportunity for non-college urban workers is the result of long-term changes in urban labor markets. Rising automation and international trade have reduced demand for middle-skill occupations that were traditionally held by non-college educated workers, such as administrative support, clerical work, and urban manufacturing. Today, urban residents are on average substantially more educated—and their jobs vastly more skill-intensive—relative to four decades ago. Yet, non-college workers in U.S. cities perform substantially less specialized and less skill-intensive work than in earlier decades—with little opportunity to develop specialized skills on the job as they once did. The gradual disappearance of urban middle-skill, non-college jobs reflects an unwinding of the distinctive structure of work for non-college adults in dense cities and metro areas relative to suburban and rural areas that prevailed in the first four post-World War II decades. And, as this distinctive occupational structure has receded, so has the formerly robust urban wage premium paid to non-college workers.
The demographic contours of occupational polarization were much more pronounced among non-white workers: Polarization among both non-college and college workers was most pronounced among Hispanics; less pronounced, but still substantial among blacks; and substantially more moderate among whites. Most disconcerting is the experience of black male college graduates. Their employment share in mid-paying occupations fell by steeply, this and was mostly accounted for by their movement into low-paying occupations. The polarization of occupational employment among urban workers was paralleled by a decline in their relative wages: the education and race/ethnic groups that saw the largest downward movement in urban versus non-urban occupational employment shares saw the largest declines in urban versus non-urban wages. Thus, for the majority of non-college workers—but especially for minorities—U.S. cities no longer appear to offer the escalator of skills acquisition and high earnings that they provided in earlier decades.
Looking ahead, the author anticipates that the current COVID-19 crisis is likely to exacerbate these adverse trends by reducing demand for non-college workers in the urban hospitality sector (i.e., air travel, ground transportation, hotels, restaurants) and in urban business services (i.e., cleaning, security, maintenance, repair, and construction) and they will not likely recover to its previous trajectory.
Washington Post Op-Ed: What a successful economic recovery plan must look like
It was good news that the economy added 2.5 million jobs last month. But we are still only one-tenth of the way to repairing the massive labor market damage caused by the novel coronavirus. The job growth was bolstered by massive governmental intervention, and most of the fiscal policies are coming to an end. In order to protect families from the worst pain, more will be required — but with the flexibility to respond to changing economic needs.
A successful recovery plan must help businesses revive and resume hiring. It must bolster incomes battered by the pandemic shutdown without creating disincentives to work. And it must support state and local governments in their efforts helping to heal the economy and shield their residents from the worst effects of the downturn. With this in mind, the four of us as members of the Economic Strategy Group and from both political parties are releasing a plan to achieve those goals.
Our plan has four parts: income support for unemployed and underemployed individuals; pandemic employment benefits for low-wage workers; support for small business; and federal funding for state and local governments. We estimate that it would add about 4 percent to gross domestic product over the next year and a half, at its peak adding about 4.5 million jobs to the economy.
With the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, maintaining unemployment insurance support is essential both to protect families and support demand. This makes economic sense: Evidence shows that every $1 paid in unemployment insurance adds $1.50 to the economy. But extending the $600 weekly unemployment insurance benefit enacted at the start of the shutdown does not make sense now, when better protections against covid-19 are being put in place and the unemployment rate is coming down. We thus propose phasing down this federal benefit by tying it to the specific economic circumstances of individual states.
We propose that in states with an unemployment rate above about 15 percent, the federal government would provide a weekly benefit equal to 40 percent of wages, capped at $400 a week. This amount would replace about 80 percent to 90 percent of lost wages up to the median wage. The benefit would be scaled down as the unemployment rate fell to 7 percent and then eliminated. Additional weeks of benefits beyond the normal 26 would be set to the same formula.
We also propose encouraging firms to use the short-time compensation plans that are available in 26 states, covering two-thirds of workers. These plans allow firms to avoid having to dismiss some workers while retaining others full time. Instead, they can reduce hours for employees, who then receive pro-rated unemployment insurance. This mechanism should help preserve jobs for when the economy recovers.
In addition, recognizing that these benefits will not reach all those who have suffered income losses, we support a temporary increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to help vulnerable families.
Coupled with these supports for the unemployed and low-income households are additional incentives to and rewards for work. The fairest way to create these would be an across-the-board increase that would apply to all lower-wage workers equally in the form of a Pandemic Earned Income Tax Credit that would give those in the labor force additional money. Alternatively, a more targeted approach would limit support to a hiring bonus for newly employed workers.
Part of the original response to the pandemic was the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided forgivable loans for small businesses. Going forward, subsidized federal loans represent the more sensible approach. They are better targeted to supporting businesses that have a prospect of being viable in the future. Accomplishing this objective would not require new funding. Rather, the Treasury Department could allocate more of the $454 billion already enacted to support lending and instruct the Federal Reserve, which administers these programs, that it should be willing to take losses by partially guaranteeing and subsidizing loans.
Finally, this is a critical time to provide help for state and local governments now facing massive revenue shortfalls. Such funding also provides effective bang for the buck, adding at least $1.70 in additional GDP per dollar spent while protecting vital services. We propose a combination of block grants, expanded Medicaid assistance keyed to unemployment rates and financial support for K-12 schools. We also call for three years of federal grant funding to public universities and community colleges, which play a critical role in retraining workers for the changing economy.
The path of the recovery is uncertain, and our plan automatically adjusts based on economic conditions. If the recovery is quick, it would cost less than $1 trillion. With a more prolonged recovery, the cost could be $2 trillion or more. But these costs are designed to cover the needs of the economy and of U.S. citizens for years to come — averaging some $60 billion a month, much below the roughly $500 billion a month expended from April through July. And policymakers weighing this admittedly high price tag must keep in mind: The costs of inaction would be much higher.
This article was originally published in the Washington Post.
Taskforce Report: Promoting Economic Recovery After COVID-19
The federal government’s fiscal and monetary responses to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have been unprecedented. However, we argue that as many of the enacted fiscal measures begin to expire over the next two months, continued policy action will be needed to promote economic recovery. This report puts forward a set of policies that should be part of the next wave of fiscal policy aimed at bolstering individuals and workers, small and mid-sized businesses, and state and local governments during a sustained recovery. Specifically, we call for income support for the unemployed, underemployed and the most vulnerable; targeted employment subsidies to reward and encourage work; reforming the Main Street Lending Program if necessary to increase lender and borrower participation; and federal support to state and local governments. Many of our proposals are designed to be contingent upon economic circumstances and, as a result, their cost would depend on how the economy unfolds. In the event of a rapid, V-shaped recovery, we estimate these proposals would cost roughly $1 trillion, while in a longer, slower recovery, the total cost would be about $2 trillion. We estimate that these policies would add about 4 percent to the level of GDP over the next six quarters, have a peak impact on employment of just over 4.5 million jobs, and lower the average unemployment rate in 2021 by about 2 percentage points.
The Hill Op-Ed: Emerging from the COVID-19 crisis as a better and more resilient society
Our nation is facing a once-in-a-generation challenge in the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis. These events will define us for decades to come, and we can only hope that we will be defined by the wisdom and courage of our response rather than by the failures that led us to this tragic place. It lies with us now to make policy choices that shape our recovery so that we emerge a better and more resilient nation. We should build, deliberately, on the temporary measures of the recently passed CARES Act to strengthen our safety net and make necessary human capital investments.
The temporary closing of businesses, elementary schools and universities, alongside the continued work of our nation’s essential workers – many of them low-wage workers – has made widespread economic insecurity and our society’s stark inequities even more obvious and galling. Millions of workers live paycheck to paycheck. Mile-long lines for food bank hand-outs are a stark image of economic insecurity. Just a couple weeks of reduced pay renders so many people unable to put food on the table. The longer this crisis goes on, the more acute and widespread the underlying household economic insecurity will be.
It was an impressive and laudable bipartisan act of Congress to pass the CARES Act so quickly, injecting $2.2 trillion into the economy, including $290 billion in direct economic impact payments to individuals and couples with annual earnings of less than $99,000 and $198,000, respectively, as well as $260 billion in expanded unemployment insurance benefits to laid-off workers. As we look ahead to the next set of bills and policies, we must deliberately spend and invest in ways that will strengthen our capitalist economy and expand economic security.
Our long-term response to this period of crisis should include a bipartisan commitment to a robust system of supplemental income support, especially for food, housing and health care. The ideal system would include well-funded programs that provide assistance during regular times of need, and automatically expand to meet increased need during economic downturns. The notion that people should save substantially more is unrealistic for many Americans. Low-wage workers, especially those with families to care for, cannot reasonably be expected to have nestled away sufficient precautionary savings to weather anything like this harsh economic storm.
The SNAP program (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) provides millions of individuals and families with dedicated cash benefits to purchase food. But ongoing efforts by some policymakers to make these benefits contingent on work hours would deliberately undermine the program’s role in helping people who lose their jobs or have their hours reduced. Let us commit once and for all to maintain the counter-cyclical nature of this program. When people lose their jobs or have their hours reduced, SNAP caseloads should increase. That’s a feature of a well-designed safety net program, not a bug.
The main federal program of low-income rental assistance is perennially underfunded, and families wait years to qualify for a coveted housing choice voucher. An estimated 2 million people, including children, are evicted from their homes each year. This month, nearly one third of American renters didn’t pay their rent. Current restrictions on eviction are stopgap measures, but not a solution. If housing assistance were an entitlement program – like SNAP or Medicaid or Unemployment Insurance – then government assistance would be available to all qualifying individuals and families, not just a lucky subset. In a rich nation like ours, it is inexcusable that so many of our fellow citizens live with the constant threat of housing insecurity. Let this crisis be the moment we right this wrong.
The fact that nearly half of individuals in this country rely on their employer for health insurance means that losing one’s job often poses a major threat to one’s ability to access affordable health care. Never has that link been more problematic than during this public health crisis. We must provide for an intentional backstop, so that a well-considered option is in place for people who suddenly lose their job and associated health insurance.
Safety net programs in these three spheres should be permanently bolstered and strengthened. That would provide a lifeline to individuals perpetually on the brink of economic despair and interject resilience into our society, so that a sudden shock doesn’t so precipitously throw so many into economic desperation. But there is more that we must do to expand economic security and bolster resilience.
Let us now, finally, address the digital divide in this country. The forced and rapid move to distance learning in schools and telework has highlighted how appalling it is that nearly 30 percent of U.S. households lack broadband internet access. A federal investment in universal broadband coverage and expanded 5G networks would help individuals and enhance the overall productivity of our workforce and resilience of our economy.
Our lasting policy response to this crisis should also involve a greater public commitment of resources to institutions of higher education. Investing in human capital is one of the most important things we can do to bolster both individual level economic security and the resilience of our economy. Yet our public colleges and universities face reduced budgets in the wake of this pandemic and economic slowdown. The CARES Act provides $14 billion to colleges and universities, with the requirement that institutions use at least half of these funds to provide emergency financial aid grants to students for expenses related to the current crisis. This is critical support during this time of immediate need, but it is not enough.
This crisis is a tragedy but also an opportunity to rebuild our society on a surer foundation. Let us shift our economic policies and spending priorities so that we don’t just survive this crisis but emerge with a system that delivers economic security and a better economic system for all.
This article was originally published in The Hill.
AESG Member Statement on COVID-19 Pandemic and Economic Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic is at once threatening American lives, the sustainability of our nation’s health care system, and our economic prosperity. Our paramount concern at this moment should be to slow the spread of this virus and equip our health care system to effectively respond. Saving lives and saving the economy are not in conflict right now; we will hasten the return to robust economic activity by taking steps to stem the spread of the virus and save lives.
Public and private sector actors must work together to provide more tests, more ventilators, more personal protective equipment, and more support for hospitals and health care facilities. Only when we have made progress on these fronts will US businesses and consumers be able to resume normal economic activity without inducing a resurgent spread that leads to even more severe health and economic effects.
We are deeply troubled by the prospect of a sustained recession that would erode the economic livelihood of millions of Americans. While Americans practice social distancing and medical professionals work to save lives, policy makers should put measures in place to support households and businesses through this difficult period. These collective efforts will allow more businesses to get up and running again as soon as possible and minimize the severity of the economic hardship on the American people.
Signatories
Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
74th Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Co-Chair, Economic Strategy Group
Erskine Bowles
President Emeritus, The University of North Carolina; Co-Chair, Economic Strategy Group
Melissa S. Kearney
Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics, The University of Maryland; Director, Economic Strategy Group
Adewale Adeyemo
Former Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics
Ben Bernanke
Former Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Joshua Bolten
President & CEO, Business Roundtable; Former Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush
Sylvia Burwell
Former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Former Director, Office of Management and Budget
Lanhee Chen
David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Dave Cote
Executive Chairman, Vertiv Holdings
James S. Crown
Chairman and CEO, Henry Crown and Company
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann
Senior Advisor, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Diana Farrell
Founding President & CEO, JPMorgan Chase Institute; Former Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Jason Furman
Former Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers; Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Timothy Geithner
75th Secretary of the Treasury; President, Warburg Pincus
Austan Goolsbee
Former Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers; Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Former Director, Congressional Budget Office; President, American Action Forum
Glenn Hubbard
Former Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers; Dean Emeritus, Columbia Business School
Neel Kashkari
President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Former Assistant Secretary, U.S.Treasury
Edward Lazear
Former Chairman, U.S. Council of Economic Advisers; Davies Family Professor of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Maya MacGuineas
President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
N. Gregory Mankiw
Former Chairman, Council on Economic Advisers; Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Janet Murguia
President and CEO, UnidosUS
Michael Nutter
Former Mayor, City of Philadelphia; Professor of Practice, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
James W. Owens
Chairman and CEO Emeritus, Caterpillar Inc.
John Podesta
Founder and Director, Center for American Progress
James Poterba
Mitsui Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Penny Pritzker
38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Chairman & Founder, PSP Partners
Bruce Reed
CEO of Civic; Former Chief of Staff, Vice President Joe Biden
Robert E. Rubin
70th Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Co-Chairman Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations
Margaret Spellings
Former U.S. Secretary of Education; President and Chief Executive Officer, Texas 2036
Gene Sperling
Former Director, National Economic Council
Robert K. Steel
Chairman of Advisory, Perella Weinberg Partners; Former Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for Domestic Finance
Lawrence H. Summers
71st Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University
Janet Yellen
Former Chair, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Jeffrey Zients
Former Director, National Economic Council; CEO, Cranemere