Biden adds former Obama budget official, onetime Warren aide to economic team

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced more members of his White House economic policy team, bolstering its progressive credentials alongside National Economic Council Director Brian Deese.

David Kamin, who worked as a senior budget official under President Barack Obama, will be deputy NEC director, and Bharat Ramamurti, a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), will be deputy NEC director for financial reform and consumer protection.

“Working families are struggling through the deepest, most inequitable economic and jobs crisis in modern history,” Biden said in a statement. “This is no time to build back the way things were before — this is the moment to build a new American economy that works for all.”

He added that the appointees have “broad viewpoints on how to build a stronger and more inclusive middle class.”

Ramamurti is managing director of the corporate power program at the progressive Roosevelt Institute, which focuses on shifting power away from large companies, and he will be joined at the White House by a former CEO of the think tank, Joelle Gamble, who has been named special assistant to the president for economic policy.

These appointees could help act as a counterweight to the perception of Deese, who has faced skepticism from the left over his work on climate change issues for Wall Street giant BlackRock. None of the positions require Senate confirmation.

Kamin, a law professor at New York University, served as a special assistant in the Obama administration and a senior adviser at the Office of Management and Budget. He previously worked at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Committee for Economic Development, and his work has explored policy options for taxing the wealthiest Americans.

Ramamurti gained more of a public profile this year as a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission, which has been tasked with overseeing a $500 billion fund run by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, meant to shore up business and local governments devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. He used that position to push for more aid to small businesses, as well as states and cities.