Robert B. Reich

Despair is worse after hope is briefly ignited. I don’t know about you, but I was elated earlier this spring when it seemed as if Donald Trump and COVID-19 were gone, and Joe Biden appeared to be getting the nation rapidly back on track. Now, much... Read More

Last week, 39 million American parents began receiving a monthly child allowance ($300 per child under 6 years old, $250 per child ages 6-17). It’s the biggest helping hand to American families in more than 85 years. They need it. Even before the pandemic, child poverty... Read More

China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America. That’s fine if it leads to more public investment in basic research, education and infrastructure — as did the Sputnik shock of the late 1950s. But it poses... Read More

America prefers to look forward rather than back. We’re a land of second acts. We move on. This can be a strength. We don’t get bogged down in outmoded traditions, old grudges, obsolete ways of thinking. We constantly reinvent. We love innovation and disruption. The downside... Read More

By almost any measure, Joe Biden’s first 100 days as president have been hugely successful. Getting millions of Americans inoculated against COVID-19 and beginning to revive the economy are central to that success. Some two-thirds of Americans support Biden’s $1.9 stimulus plan, already enacted. His infrastructure... Read More

Joe Biden is embarking on the biggest government initiative in more than a half-century, “unlike anything we have seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades go,” he says. But when it comes to details, it sounds as boring... Read More

A quarter-century ago, I and other members of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet urged him to reject the Republican proposal to end welfare. It was too punitive, we said, subjecting poor Americans to deep and abiding poverty. But Clinton’s political advisers warned that unless he went along, he... Read More

In 1963, when the newly sworn-in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” America is again approaching a crucial decision point... Read More

While most of official Washington has been consumed with the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation. Congress is moving ahead with President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands health care and... Read More