parties to come to agreement on that because he believes that the crises facing the american people -- as we saw the jobs numbers this morning, the unemployment insurance claims, i should say -- we put out a statement in case you did not see that -- and as we have seen in the reports a few minutes ago, the crisis is dire, and it requires immediate action, and we hope and expect members of both parties to work together to do that. we are also not going to take options off the table. we will proceed with those discussions over the next several days. >> if i could just follow-up, there was some reporting there was going to be a meeting this weekend with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. can you give us any indication -- is that going to happen with president biden or his economic team? jen: i think the reporting was around meeting with the nec director. he will definitely be engaging with a range of members and a

range of different groups of members on capitol hill in the coming days. we are still working to confirm meetings before i came out here and i hope to have more on that for you tomorrow. >> president biden propose this 1.9 trillion dollar package. you already have republicans who say we just passed a stimulus bill. they are not going to get on board with this. mitt romney among them saying they just passed a program that was over 900 million dollars. how does president biden expect to get this past -- past -- passed with bipartisan support? jen: i think it fits perfectly with his message and bipartisan support. he wants to work with republicans and democrats to address the problems americans are facing. the package was designed based on recommendations from health experts, from economists.

it has been applauded by everyone from senator bernie sanders to the chamber of commerce, and there are specific pieces that are meant to serve as a bridge for the american people, including a large percentage of investments in unemployment insurance, funding for vaccine distribution, something pivotal as we have already been discussing today, for reopening schools. part of the discussion we will be having with members is what do you want to cut. >> quick follow-up on that, work on the filibuster -- where does president biden come down on that? does he think there should not be a filibuster? jen: the president-elect spoke just yesterday about the spirit of working together and bipartisanship to confront the core crises facing us. you have already seen him work with republicans and democrats,

working toward a bipartisan approach to passing packages that will address the crises we are facing, and that is certainly has priority and preference, so that is what he will continue to work on on day two of the administration. go ahead. >> [indiscernible] >> i just gave you a hard time. >> i want to push you a little more on that question. this call for unity that the president made in his speech yesterday, but there has so far been almost no fig leaf so far to the republican party. the executive orders that have come out of the gate have been largely designed as an erasing of the trump legacy. put forth an immigration bill that provides a path to citizenship but is not too much of a nod toward border security.

a $1.9 trillion covert relief bill that has already brought some criticism. where is the actual action on this idea of bipartisanship, and when will we see some substantial outreach in terms of something that republicans want to do, too? jen: there is a lot in this, so let me do my best. his unemployment insurance only an issue that democrats in the country want? do only democrats want their kids go -- to go back to school? do only democrats want vaccines to be distributed across the country? we feel that that package -- he feels that package is designed for bipartisan support. i will also say that we have also had some positive developments on our confirmation and our nominees. last night, as you all saw, the president's nominee, now confirmed, the first female

leader of the intelligence community was confirmed with a vote of 89-10 -- you can check me on that, but an overwhelming vote. we have seen progress today on the nomination and hopeful confirmation of lloyd austin. there is movement supported by both sides of the aisle and members of both parties. i think if you talk to republicans on the hill, which i know many of you do, they will say they are not looking for something symbolic. they are looking for engagement. they are looking to have a conversation. they are looking to have a dialogue, and that is exactly what he plans to do. >> has the president reached out to congressional leaders to sit down and discuss the package? how much will he be offering? jen: i expect he will be rolling up his sleeves and be quite involved. yesterday was quite a busy day for him, as you will know. his schedule was minute by minute and his family was here, but he was involved even before

yesterday having conversations with members of both parties, picking up the phone and having those conversations. he saw, of course, members of both parties, invited members of both parties to join him. it was not about specifics of the bill, but they did have an opportunity to talk about his agenda and working together on his agenda moving forward, but i think you will see him quite involved in the days ahead, but you will also see the president quite involved. you will also see policy leaders in the administration quite involved. >> [indiscernible] jen: i think we will have more to share with you soon in terms of engagement. >> does the administration actually invoked the defense production act? and could you spell out what changes we could see because of this?

jen: let me give you a very specific example that helped make it clear for me. one move was to acquire more syringes which allow pharmacists to extract and extra dose of the pfizer vial, so making more doses available, of course. it also prioritizes the defense production act raw materials that are used or produced a vaccine, and it enables manufacturers -- us to empower and invoke, i guess, and action from manufacturers to make sure we have the materials we need to get the vaccines out the door and into the arms of americans. in terms of obviously he signed it this afternoon. i will have to circle back with you on what it means, if it is officially invoked as of this moment. >> is the white house drafting a legislative bill?

jen: you mean in terms of what he announced last week or last thursday? he announced what his ideas will be and what his decision is, but we are having discussions with members of both parties as we have for the last week of what that would look like. i'm happy to talk to our legislative team. i think it was important to the president to outline what his vision would be. this is how the process should actually work, right? the president outlines, here is my vision, here is what i think should be in the process. let's have discussion, let's have engagement in both parties, and let's see what comes out of the other side. >> i don't think i heard an answer about if the president supports keeping the filibuster, where he sits on that. has he talked to senator sure about that? he served there a long time. what are his thoughts on that? jen: i think what i was

conveying to kristen is that the president has been clear. he wants to work with parties and find bipartisan paths forward. i do not have any confirmations to read out at this point. i do not think i have more to add to my answer. >> i know there was talk about the senate doing two things at once, still reporting this afternoon about hoping to have a trial starting in february. where do you stand on that? would it be preferable to do that first, or are you ok with later? jen: we have been pretty consistent that we believe the timing and the mechanisms for congress and the senate moving forward and holding the former president accountable -- we will leave that to them. our biggest priority and focus is ensuring that it does not delay the senate, congress

moving forward in consideration, discussion around the covert relief package that the president approved last week. >> i have a question for myself and a question for someone who could not be here. some conservatives are afraid the president is going to try to roll back religious exemptions for groups like little sisters of the poor. pursuing the line of going after the exemptions, what is the president going to do on that? jen: i have not discussed that particular issue with him. i'm happy to circle back with you, but there's not a change in his position from what he said earlier this summer. did you have another question?

>> the second question is we saw the president warmly greet a parade pushing for the d.c. statehood measure within 100 days. will the administration get behind this bill and does the president support it? jen: i hate to disappoint you, but i will have to circle back with you on that as well. there is quite a bit going on. i have not discussed d.c. statehood with him in the last 36 hours. >> i wanted to circle back on something covid-related. the president made a policy of engaging with in person learning in the first 100 days. i wonder if the administration is planning to issue any kind of

uniform guidance to states on reopening schools, businesses, indoor dining, stuff like that? jen: he wants to make sure health and medical experts are leading in determining guidance, and any guidance will come from the cdc. we will, of course, defer to that, but part of our priority and focus is on providing more engagement with states, more clear guidance from the federal level in terms of how we are planning to operate, what data we are seeing, how vaccines are being distributed, what we see as the challenges, and that communication has been lacking, as we understand it, from our conversations in the past few months, so that is what we will focus on improving in the next few months. >> are you planning on daily or weekly calls with states? how do you plan to improve communication? jen: we have an entire group and team, most of whom are official,

and part of their role will be engaging with governors -- democrats and republicans -- ayers, local elected officials to gain a better understanding of what is happening on the ground. that will be how they are intaking a great deal of information. obviously, health care providers and experts on the ground as well. we will also do engagements from the level of the president and vice president as well because they also want to have that conversation with state and local officials on what they are experiencing, what they see the challenges as and how they can be addressed. that is something i think in president biden's heart, he is a local elected official still, and he gets in the weeds of what they are experiencing, and he will be involved in that as well. >> is a lot of really big things the administration wants to do. infrastructure, stimulus, tax reform. can you sort of lay out the cadence for us over the upcoming year? how do you envision those things playing out?

jen: what i can lay out for you on our first full day here is what our initial priorities are, and they revolve around addressing the four crises that the president has stated that the country is facing, including getting the pandemic under control, getting people back to work, addressing our climate crisis, and addressing racial equity. >> do you think tax reform happens in 2021? jen: i don't have any productions for you on that. i think at this point in time and for the foreseeable future, addressing the pandemic, getting the pandemic under control and that linkage to getting people back to work will be his top priority. >> what would you say to those who have lost their job? what would the message from the president and the white house be?

jen: the message would be his record shows he is committed to clean energy jobs, to jobs that are not only good, high-paying jobs, union jobs, but ones that are also good for our environment. he things it is possible to do both. he led an effort when he was vice president to put millions of people to work with both of those priorities in mind, and he will continue to do that as president. he opposed keystone pipeline back in 2013 when there was the consideration of the permit -- i'm sorry, i don't think it was 2013. i think it was a little bit after that. he has been consistent in his view, and he is delivering on a promise made to the american public during his campaign. go ahead in the back. >> what is president biden's

position on taking the relationship [indiscernible] jen: first, i would say president biden, who has visited india many times, respects and values the long, bipartisan successful relationship between leaders in india and united states. he looks forward to a continuation of that. obviously, he -- obviously, she was selected and yesterday was sworn in -- caroline: you have been listening to the new white house press secretary and anthony fauci little bit earlier about the new administration's focus. she was just laying out the new priorities. joe: joining us, professor stiglitz from columbia university. we heard talk about stimulus. you had economic data this morning showing initial jobless claims very elevated, but there

is a lot of optimism about the economy overall. in your view, let's start with the big picture -- 1.9 trillion dollar package the administration has announced -- is it sufficient in your view to at least basically ensure we get back to pre-crisis levels? professor stiglitz: i think it is, and remember, there is a lot of uncertainty about covid-19. if the vaccine continues to be effective and americans take the vaccine and we get the pandemic under control, i'm optimistic that we will have a strong recovery, but we need that $1.9 trillion. the mountain of damage that could be done in the next few months without that would be hard to repair. there's an old saying, an ounce

of prevention is worth a pound of cure. what we are trying to do is prevent more damage to the economy. romaine: when we talk about repairing the damage to the economy and more importantly, preventing or at least mitigating potential economic crises down the road, there's a lot of talk about rethinking fiscal policy. there's a lot of talk about automatic triggers. when you see that type of discussion going on in washington right now, and someone comes to you and says, what should we do? -- what do you say? professor stiglitz: i'm very pleased this discussion is going on because i have been a long-term advocate of what are called automatic stabilizers. we should not have to have a long discussion in congress. in 1946, we passed a law that the u.s. would do everything it

could to maintain full employment including helping people who get unemployed because of a failure in our efforts to get people employed. in my opinion, the employment insurance program should be extended and strengthened. that is an example. another example is when the economy goes into a downturn, the revenues to the state modalities plummet, and that is a negative feedback. we ought to do just the opposite. when revenues go down not because they have cut taxes, but because the level of economic activity has gone down, there ought to be an automatic revenue-sharing program that kicks in that will enable these

modalities to maintain essential services, and that would be good not only for our well-being, but it would also be good for our economy in terms of stabilizing our economy. those were the kinds of measures that will make for an economy that works better over the long run, and then policymakers ought to be focusing on fine tuning it beyond that. is there something special about this or that economic downturn that could draw their attention? again, do that automatically. we have to have for the pandemic this special kind of assistance for the health care sector to protect people from the disease itself. caroline: i'm interested in the long-term nature and the worry about scarring to the labor force, a lot of permanent

unemployment around. do you worry about the long-term damage? >> most countries worry about it. they set up programs to do what they could to keep the links between workers and their employers throughout the pandemic. unfortunately, the united states did not have leadership at the top, and we need to get the kind of program that worked in other countries like new zealand and denmark, and the result of that is we have this enormous rise in unemployment. another 900,000 unemployed pointed out today. almost 500,000 in the special

program. those are drastic numbers. you are right -- what we will have to -- we will be -- we should be worried about, i'm hopeful that as the economy picks up again, many of these people will naturally get rehired, but i think we will have to have some programs to help retrain workers. one of the things that may be happening is there may be some restructuring of our economy. we know that. we need that. whenever there is restructuring, you have to -- you have some sectors that have to move from

the past like fossil fuels into new sectors. joe: obviously, a major priority will be getting back to precrisis levels of activity, but then the big question is -- what is the longer-term trajectory? how does the economy reversed some of the deepening trends of the economy we were seeing long before coronavirus hit? long before people were talking about patient recoveries and so on. from a legislative standpoint, what would be key in your view that the white house should pursue, something so that the postcrisis economy does not look like pre-crisis? professor stiglitz: you're absolutely right. we do not want to go back to january 2020. as president biden said, we want to build back better. part of building back better is to build back with less inequality.

two measures are important. most americans do not realize that adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in the united states is the same level that it was roughly 65 years of -- 65 years ago. can you imagine no pay raises in 65 years? the other thing is it would be good for our economy to have that kind of increase in the minimum wage. it will not cause a loss of jobs. it will actually stimulate the economy. the other thing was an increase in earned income tax credit. a way of rewarding work -- we need to do that more, and a lot of my more conservative friends agree that is important. they would rather have more of that. they think in the balance, they

would like to see an increase in the earned income tax credit. one of the things that is very notable about the united states that distinguishes us from other advantage countries is we do not have an ecosystem of social protection. an example was very manifest in the pandemic. we do not have mandatory paid sick leave, and the consequences of that, with so many americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, they went to work even when they were sick. it's bad health policy, but it is also cruel. included in this package was better social protection. these are measures they put as temporary. they need to be part of the

long-term. caroline: we want to thank you, of course. nobel laureate and professor of economics at columbia university, thank you so much for giving us your time and your thoughtful analysis of what is happening at the moment in terms of the future of this administration and how it might equalize this economy. meanwhile, the new administration taking to the airwaves. that does it for "what'd you miss?" joe: "bloomberg technology" and "daybreak us trail your" coming up next. -- "daybreak australia" coming up next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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