New Leadership at Roosevelt

Roosevelt Welcomes New President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins

The Roosevelt Institute announced this week that Elizabeth Wilkins will join the organization as president and CEO in February 2025. Wilkins was formerly a top adviser to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and to President Biden’s former Chief of Staff Ron Klain.

“It’s hard to imagine a better leader for the Roosevelt Institute’s next chapter than Elizabeth,” Klain said in a statement for Politico Pro. “She brings a unique combination of creative thinking and inclusive organizational leadership to the work of effective policymaking and implementation.”

This announcement comes after longtime president and CEO Felicia Wong announced earlier this year that she would transition to devote her full attention to building a network of progressive talent through the Roosevelt Society.

In the face of looming battles over tax policy and antitrust enforcement, progressives will need to be ever-vigilant and step up to meet the moment in 2025. “For Roosevelt specifically, that’s an opportunity for us to double down and not run away from policy” fights, Wilkins told Politico Pro. “I am extraordinarily excited to take the helm at this moment.”

The Gendered Shortcomings of Biden’s Economic Record

A good deal of 2024 election reporting has focused on how the Left might win back the young men who have drifted right in recent years. But progressives will need to pay just as much attention to addressing women’s unmet economic needs if they want to build a left-wing populist movement.

As Senior Vice President of Roosevelt’s think tank Suzanne Kahn writes for Dissent magazine, “Despite efforts to address the failures of the care sector for workers and consumers alike, the care elements of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda were compromised out of the final Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In other words, the parts of the Biden agenda most targeted at addressing women’s economic vulnerabilities never passed.” 

The investments that did pass benefited male-dominated industries such as manufacturing and failed to address both long-standing gender wage gaps and cost-of-living challenges that more acutely harm women. As Kahn notes, “Although inflation is certainly felt by everyone, for the vast majority of families women serve as the primary grocery shoppers. . . . Encouraging women to enter manufacturing is not a satisfying answer when the costs that define their lives remain stubbornly high.”

Women’s core concerns must be central to progressive attempts to build a left-wing populist economic movement, Kahn concludes. Rejecting a right-wing economics that relies on “traditional” gender roles requires forging a new path toward a gender-equal economy.

How a Tax Paid in Stock Could Raise a Trillion Dollars Within a Year

The cost of a federal plan to pay reparations for slavery—much like for other long-unaddressed challenges such as climate change and universal childcare—has only increased over time thanks to decades of neglect and delay. But Jeremy Bearer-Friend, associate professor of law at George Washington University, offers a unique approach to funding such priorities: a tax paid in shares of corporate stock rather than in cash.

“The public sector has left an enormously powerful tool out of its toolbox by assuming all taxes should be paid in cash,” Bearer-Friend writes, highlighting the simplicity and immediacy with which the federal government could roll out such a funding mechanism using existing tax infrastructure.

Though this novel sort of tax might be levied to address any number of progressive priorities, it is particularly well-suited to the long-overdue issue of reparations. As Bearer-Friend argues, “The current arrangement of our economy is partially the result of the compounded racial inequality that originated with slavery, thus there can be no redress of that unjust enrichment without a reordering of existing wealth.”

While a fully realized reparations plan will require additional mechanisms for tax enforcement and distribution of funds, Bearer-Friend pushes back on the fundamental idea that cost is a barrier: “To the extent that critics object to reparations because of its impact on the national deficit, this brief solves that problem.”

Read the full brief: “Financing Reparative Policies: How a Tax Paid in Stock Could Raise a Trillion Dollars Within a Year.” 

What We’re Talking About

What We’re Reading

Roosevelt Fellow Joshua Macey spoke to KVPR about how one of California’s largest oil and gas producers might be using carbon removal projects as a cover for delaying the cleanup of idle oil wells.  

Home mortgage backers aren’t taking the risks of climate change seriously, the New York Times reports, overpricing properties in areas with high risk of flooding and ignoring anticipated damage over the years to come.  

In a win for workers and consumers, a federal judge blocked the proposed Kroger-Albertsons grocery chain merger. Now the companies are consoling their investors by spending billions on stock buybacks.