How Biden Pick Heather Boushey Rose to the Top

As part of the transition process, President-elect Joe Biden has started naming key members of his upcoming administration. There have been some controversial selections. For example, Republicans and some Democrats opposed Neera Tanden's nomination. Biden has also named Heather Boushey as a member of the CEA (Council of Economic Advisors). What’s Boushey’s net worth and how would her selection help the Biden administration?

Along with Boushey, Biden has named Jared Bernstein as the other member of the CEA. The CEA would be headed by Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton University labor economist. Unlike the Trump administration, a lot of women would occupy key places in the Biden administration. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will have many firsts to her name when she assumes the post next year.

The CEA is a key arm of the U.S. federal government whose mandate is to offer economic advice to the president on both the domestic and the economic front. The CEA also assists the president in preparing the Economic Report and determines whether the different federal government programs are having the intended impact.

The CEA would assume great significance considering the economic scenario amid the COVID-19 pandemic. President-elect Joe Biden would have to walk a tightrope in managing stimulus expectations while also keeping an eye on the soaring budget deficit, which has risen above 100 percent of the GDP.

As a member of the CEA, Boushey, who has been an adviser to Biden for a long time, would be expected to offer advice to the president to help frame economic policies. While the swift actions by the Federal Reserve and the Trump administration helped bail out the U.S. economy, a lot more needs to be done for the economy to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Heather Boushey is the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which she co-founded in 2013. Previously, she worked as a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. A lot of her work focused on economic inequality. In 2016, Boushey published the book Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict. She promoted affordable child care and universal access to sick leave.

Boushey's most recent work is Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It, which was published in October 2020. In the book, she argues how the massive inequality in society is a negative for markets as well as democracy. She also notes how income inequality impacts growth in multiple ways. Both of these books were published by the Harvard University Press.

As part of the CEA, Boushey could help devise policies directed at helping the poor and lower-middle-class in American society. Incidentally, wealth inequality has increased amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While the rich have become richer due to the spike in stock markets, the poor have become poorer. Despite a fall in unemployment levels from April 2020, millions of Americans are still unemployed. Boushey’s prior work in studying inequality will likely come in handy.

Heather Boushey married Todd Nathaniel Tucker in 2007. Currently, Tucker is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He specializes in international law and trade agreements.

There isn't any publicly available information on Heather Boushey’s net worth. Considering that Boushey is a successful economist and author, she likely has a decent net worth.