Bidenomics: Content and Prospects

Six months into Joe Biden's presidency, a Google search for "Bidenomics" returns 256,000 hits.Unfortunately, such a search does not tell us the meaning of the term, or even whether a coherent concept exists.At root, President Biden and his team envisage a more expansive economic role for government.Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, having come of political age in the era of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" of spending programs on education, healthcare, urban renewal and anti-poverty.Biden's infrastructure proposal envisaged $2.3 trillion of new spending on roads, bridges, broadband and climate change abatement.This was twinned with his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan for healthcare, childcare, eldercare and education programs.Over the summer, the infrastructure package was downsized to $600 billion of new spending.The revision was deemed necessary to bring Republican legislators on board and retain the support of moderate Democrats from heavily Republican states, such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.