Gene Sperling
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Clinton/Obama NEC Director: Biden Sr. Advisor;
Founder: Economic Dignity Lab/McCourt School, Georgetown: & Center Universal Ed; Dad, Husband, Ann Arbor boy
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Articles by Gene Sperling
The Solution to the AI Catch-22
Young workers face a daunting job market. While the depth, severity, and speed of job loss due to artificial intelligence remain the most dramatic and uncertain economic issues of our time, a range of data shows that we may be entering an entry-level jobs crunch for those just joining the workforce. Researchers at Stanford were among the first to suggest that some of the challenges facing entry-level and younger workers may be driven by AI adoption.
We Need to Invest in the Dignity of Work for the AI Era Original
At the heart of the AI is a fear that it could become the first technology in human history to lead to fewer jobs for workers and permanently higher unemployment. The reason this would be so devastating goes beyond simply its financial impact on families. The harm from a dramatic AI-induced increase in mass unemployment would not be cured simply with Universal Basic Income, a policy that shares the gains of AI by simply cutting equal checks to ensure basic sustenance for all.
To avoid backlash, tech giants must share their AI wealth before it’s too late
The writer is former director of the National Economic Council and executive director of the Economic Dignity Lab at Georgetown The...
An Economic Dignity Compact for the AI Age
Technology does not shape our destiny. We still have the power to do that—if we keep human well-being, happiness, and dignity top of mind.
A Journal of Ideas
One of the most important and uncertain debates on artificial intelligence centers on whether AI will lead not just to jarring job disruption for millions of workers but to an actual marginalization of humans in the workforce. A world without work—or with far less work—as we know it. There is growing consensus that AI could lead to dramatic job dislocation.
Commentary: The affordability crisis is real and tariffs caused it
President Donald Trump traveled to Pennsylvania last week to double down on his economic messages: The affordability concerns of Americans are a Democratic “hoax” and if anyone is unhappy, it’s a Blame Biden Economy. A more fitting description would be the Trump Self-Inflicted Wound Economy. It’s not unusual for presidents starting their terms to attribute economic troubles to their predecessors. Fair enough.
Commentary: The affordability crisis is real and tariffs caused it
PresidentDonald Trumptraveled toPennsylvanialast week to double down on his economic messages: The affordability concerns of Americans are a Democratic hoax and if anyone is unhappy, it's a Blame Biden Economy. A more fitting description would be theTrump Self-Inflicted Wound Economy. It's not unusual for presidents starting their terms to attribute economic troubles to their predecessors. Fair enough.
COMMENTARY: The affordability crisis is real and tariffs caused it | Jefferson City News-Tribune
President Donald Trump traveled to Pennsylvania last week to double down on his economic messages: The affordability concerns of Americans are a Democratic "hoax" and if anyone is unhappy, it's a Blame Biden Economy. A more fitting description would be the Trump Self-Inflicted Wound Economy. It's not unusual for presidents starting their terms to attribute economic troubles to their predecessors. Fair enough.
Commentary: The affordability crisis is real and tariffs caused it
People shop for fruit in a grocery store in the Manhattan borough of New York City on Dec. 13, 2025. (Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images/TNS) President Donald Trump traveled to Pennsylvania last week to double down on his economic messages: The affordability concerns of Americans are a Democratic "hoax" and if anyone is unhappy, it's a Blame Biden Economy. A more fitting description would be the Trump Self-Inflicted Wound Economy.
Commentary: The affordability crisis is real and tariffs caused it
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The Affordability Crisis Is Real and Tariffs Caused It
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images (Bloomberg Opinion) -- has lost More From Bloomberg Opinion: The GOP Still Isn’t Getting It on Affordability: Nia-Malika Henderson Affordability Isn’t a Hoax.
Republican budget bill adds health care taxes - but not on the rich - The Washington Post
Gene Sperling was director of the National Economic Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and was a senior adviser to President Joe Biden. A core principle of the Republican budget bill was that extending existing federal tax cuts should not be counted as raising the deficit because they are already part of “current policy.” By the same logic, Republicans argued that letting the cuts expire at the end of this year would be a tax increase.
The worst thing Trump is doing to the economy isn’t tariffs
The worst thing Trump is doing to the economy isn’t tariffs (washingtonpost.com) The worst thing Trump is doing to the economy isn’t tariffs By Gene Sperling 2025061611152800 Ever since Alexander Hamilton established the full faith and credit of the U.S. government as ironclad, generations of Americans have benefited from exceptional trust in our country's economic integrity. This stellar economic reputation has helped make America a magnet for long-term innovative, job-creating investments.
The inconvenient truth about Republican Medicaid fraud claims
Few lines are more central to the congressional Republican leadership’s elevator pitch than the idea that we will get major savings by cutting Medicaid fraud, not Medicaid benefits. This sales pitch is no small deal to this White House. A president seeking to pass his tax bill with slim congressional majorities could be tanked by a handful of Republicans afraid they’ll lose seats.
Opinion - The inconvenient truth about Republican Medicaid fraud claims
Few lines are more central to the congressional Republican leadership’s elevator pitch than the idea that we will get major savings by cutting Medicaid fraud, not Medicaid benefits. This sales pitch is no small deal to this White House. A president seeking to pass his tax bill with slim congressional majorities could be tanked by a handful of Republicans afraid they’ll lose seats.
“Tragedy” of a One-Sided Biden Critique
Gene Sperling responds to Jason Furman’s questionable crusade against Biden economic policy. By Gene Sperling from March 7, 2025, 12:55 pm – 52 MIN READ Tagged Biden AdministrationBidenomics Donald Trump’s victory has prompted significant soul-searching among Democrats about the future of the party’s economic policy.
The three most likely ways Republicans will try to cut Medicaid
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Opinion | The three most likely ways Republicans will try to cut Medicaid Original
The Trump White House and the Republican Congress have many unresolved budget moves in 2025, but one two-part fiscal strategy seems for certain: seek hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts and spare no contortion in describing them as “painless.” The House GOP’s new budget blueprint unveiled Wednesday makes clear Republican plans to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid.
The three most likely ways Republicans will try to cut Medicaid
Expert explains what happens to student loan debt if Trump ends the Department of Education Pamela Brown speaks to CNN correspondent René Marsh and Attorney Adam Minsky about President Trump's efforts to end the Department of Education and what it could mean for people with student loan debt.
Opinion | The Vindication of Biden’s American Rescue Plan
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Justice in the Middle
When O'Connor was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court, in the summer of 1981, some conservatives, alarmed by her pro-choice votes as an Arizona state legislator, strongly protested. While O'Connor maintained that she was personally opposed to abortion, her refusal in her Senate confirmation hearings to reveal how she would vote, because the issue would soon be before the Court, did little to quiet the anti-abortion forces.
Getting the Child Tax Credit Right for Puerto Rico: The American Rescue Plan’s Permanent, Historic Changes to Tax Relief in Puerto Rico
By Gene Sperling, American Rescue Plan Coordinator and Senior Advisor to the President A deeply troubling truth in the American tax system over the last 25 years is that the children of Puerto Rico were never given equal status when it came to the Child Tax Credit. Since its passage in 1997, the Child Tax Credit was expanded and made gradually larger and more refundable for families with children in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Opinion | Biden’s Covid Stimulus Plan Rescued America Original
Consider long-term unemployment. While most jobs will return after an economic downturn, the number of people struggling with long-term unemployment—without work for at least six months—often remains relatively high for months after general unemployment peaks. Long-term unemployment persisted for years after the double-dip recession of the early 1980s and well past when President Reagan started running his “Morning in America” ads in 1984.
COMPOSURE | Kirkus Reviews
by Gene Sperling ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020 Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account.
RISK | Kirkus Reviews
by Gene Sperling ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020 Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account.
BECOMING TRADER JOE
by Gene Sperling ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020 Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account.
MOVE FAST | Kirkus Reviews
by Gene Sperling ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020 Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account.
Opinion | The New Debt Prisons
While controversial calls to “defund the police” have grabbed headlines, we urgently need to examine how we fund the police today. The increasing use of excessive fees, fines, and surcharges to fund parts of our criminal justice system is creating punitive debt traps for millions of low-income Americans leaving prison. Many find themselves in an economic prison: prevented from paying down their debts by the debts themselves.
Will Biden’s Tax Plan Discourage Work? We Already Know the Answer.
© illustration via Pexels pexels-photo-5849592.jpg President Joe Biden’s proposal to make the Child Tax Credit larger and fully available to all poor families has been widely recognized for its potential to reduce child poverty. Yet the proposal is drawing a predictable criticism from some conservative corners: that because the full child credit would go even to families with very low or no incomes, it will discourage work.
Why U.S. Needs Biden's $1.9 Trillion Economic Plan
Why U.S. Needs Biden's $1.9 Trillion Economic Plan
Gene Sperling: Joe Biden’s $1.9tn plan is necessary as economic recovery insurance
The writer served as US national economic adviser to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton US president Joe Biden’s plan for $1.9tn in Covid-19...
Democrats Should Unify Behind the Idea of Economic Dignity Original
Even with the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket winning by a larger margin than any challenger since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, the disappointment over the Democratic Party’s performance in Congress and state legislatures has led to internal division.
ON IMPEACHMENT | Kirkus Reviews
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account.
DISPOSABLE CITY | Kirkus Reviews
How rising sea levels will test the resiliency of Florida's coastal city. Miami-based journalist Ariza, who grew up in his native Santo Domingo and Miami, makes a compelling book debut with an urgent analysis of Miami’s vulnerability to climate change.
FUTUREPROOF | Kirkus Reviews
A massive investigation of economic history in the service of proposing a political order to overcome inequality. Readers who like their political manifestoes in manageable sizes, à la Common Sense or The Communist Manifesto, may be overwhelmed by the latest from famed French economist Piketty (Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901-1998, 2014, etc.), but it’s a significant work.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
A veteran American historian looks back at previous presidencies to see how we arrived at our current one. Dallek—who has published works about Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, among others—devotes chapters to all the presidents between Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, briefly summarizing their lives and times and assessing their strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and failures.
OPINION: Martin Luther King Jr. predicted this moment
The coronavirus shows us clearer than ever before that ‘all labor has dignity.’ By GENE B. SPERLING Fifty-two years ago, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously asserted the dignity of all work, he seemed to foresee this moment when it would become so clear that the labor of everyone — farmworkers, grocers, delivery drivers, caregivers, nursing assistants — was essential to all of our health and well-being.
In Tribute to Doris H. Sperling
Doris Louise Hyman Sperling died peacefully just shy of turning 89 years old on May 13, 2020 in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area where she had gone to college, worked, and raised her family for almost 70 years. Doris was born in Mount Vernon, New York but grew up in Miami Beach, Florida where her family moved when she was a young child during the Great Depression.
The New Normal: Economic Justice After COVID-19 (Speaker Gene Sperling, May 19)
For many, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fault lines in the American economy, illustrating in real time the consequences of growing economic inequality. But after the crisis passes, will we change the way we approach economic policy? What lessons can we learn from this moment? Is either major party equipped to deliver effective reform on the other side of the pandemic?
"Economic Dignity" By Gene Sperling
When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating the shaping and execution of the U.S. government’s economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised and dismayed when serious people in Washington worried out loud that Obama’s focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” Too often, Sperling found that our economic debate confused ends and means.
Punching Steph Curry
The rules of the game drive the nature of competition. 6:30 AM ET Adeshola Makinde Imagine, if you will, that the NBA operated under a slightly different set of rules, allowing each team to throw a limited number of punches per game at the opposing team. Teams would scramble to find the most effective ways to punch out opposing superstars, or to protect their own. They might bring on “designated punchers,” better at throwing right hooks than hook shots.
The Coronavirus Shows 'Essential Workers' Aren't Fairly Treated - The New York Times
Fifty-two years ago, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously asserted the dignity of all work, he seemed to foresee this moment when it would become so clear that the labor of everyone — farmworkers, grocers, delivery drivers, caregivers, nursing assistants — was essential to all of our health and well-being.
ECONOMIC DIGNITY
by Ezra Klein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 28, 2020 A sharp explanation of how American politics has become so discordant. Journalist Klein, co-founder of Vox, formerly of the Washington Post, MSNBC, and Bloomberg, reminds readers that political commentators in the 1950s and ’60s denounced Republicans and Democrats as “tweedledum and tweedledee.” With liberals and conservatives in both parties, they complained, voters lacked a true choice.
"He'll Get His Facts Straight. He's a Great Guy."
The president’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says the FBI sent stormtroopers to Michael Cohen’s office, and that the investigators ought to be investigated. He also admitted, in passing on Fox News, that President Trump did reimburse Cohen for that payment to Stormy Daniels. Meanwhile, the president is hurtling towards diplomacy in North Korea, but Ronan Farrow says there’s war on peace -- a weakening of American diplomatic power that long predates Trump.
The White House Current Third Party Pages
The White House has conducted and published a Privacy Impact Assessment of Third-Party Sites. 1. OVERVIEW & PURPOSE The White House has official pages or accounts on a variety of popular social network and media sites and applications to share content and engage with the American public. Third parties design and operate these sites (“third-party sites”), and the White House is one of many users on these sites.
Rising-Tide Economics
Features In the twenty-first-century economy, growth and equality must go hand in hand.
No Pain, No Savings
WASHINGTON - IF President Bush truly wants a bipartisan agreement on Social Security reform, he should recognize that he can keep the system solvent, increase savings and promote his ownership agenda without dividing Washington by carving Social Security into private accounts.
Economic Dignity
Features We must not lose sight of what economic policy is all about: allowing people to lead dignified lives. By Gene Sperling from Spring 2019, No. 52 – 43 MIN READ Tagged EconomicsInequality Construction workers march toward the Washington, DC Metro headquarters, Nov. 11, 1974.
How the Tax Plan Will Send Jobs Overseas | RealClearPolitics
How the Tax Plan Will Send Jobs Overseas Despite Donald Trump’s “America first” rhetoric, many suspected that the tax plan he would support would actually increase the incentives for U.S. multinationals to move both profits and operations overseas. I wrote about this inevitability a few weeks ago, before the details of the Trump-GOP tax plan emerged.Read Full Article »
How the Tax Plan Will Send Jobs Overseas
Despite Donald Trump’s “America first” rhetoric, many suspected that the tax plan he would support would actually increase the incentives for U.S. multinationals to move both profits and operations overseas. I wrote about this inevitability a few weeks ago, before the details of the Trump-GOP tax plan emerged. Now that the bill is advancing, it’s clear that things aren’t as bad as many feared. They’re worse.
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