Now All Biden Has to Do Is Build It
About this episode
Klein talks with Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong about the hard road from Biden's legislative victories to lived reality. They assess the three big bills — the CHIPS and Science Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the Inflation Reduction Act — as a turn toward industrial policy and what Wong calls the 'sunny side of post-neoliberalism.' Wong explains the CHIPS Act's bets on basic research and $52 billion for domestic semiconductor manufacturing, and discusses the corporate-welfare critique and the promise of regional tech hubs. The conversation centers on implementation: coordinating multiple agencies, staffing shortages, multi-year planning horizons, and the clash between speed and layered policy goals like prevailing-wage and Buy American provisions. They also cover NIMBYism, the need to involve local communities, weak civic institutions, and participatory budgeting experiments, closing with three book recommendations.