I’d call it no grand bargain, the best I ever had

In encouraging news, the Biden economic team is generally pro-labor, pro-full-employment people, with deficit hawks like Bruce Reed out of the picture:

President-elect Joe Biden intends to nominate a diverse group of economic advisers to serve alongside Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen as he prepares to confront the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, people familiar with the decision said Sunday.

Mr. Biden will nominate Neera Tanden, the president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He will nominate Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton University labor economist, to be chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, these people said.

The president-elect plans to choose Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, a former senior international economic adviser during the Obama administration, to serve as Ms. Yellen’s top deputy at the Treasury Department. And he will turn to two campaign economic advisers, Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, to serve as members of the CEA alongside Ms. Rouse, the people said.

This is where an old-school transactional politician can be a plus. Obama seemed to genuinely care about deficit reductions, resulting in some bad deals that damaged Democrats politically, and of course they deficit was immediately blown up as soon as Republicans took over anyway — the whole concept of “Grand Bargains” on the deficit when you’re dealing with a party that doesn’t care about deficits at all was always entirely nonsensical. Biden seems to understand that what’s good for the economy is also good for him, which is a major improvement.