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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now Oren Cass, who has been on with us from time to time since 2015, after being the top domestic policy advisor to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. For those of you who do not watch Republican Party politics and economics closely, you may not know that Oren Cass has since become a force, a very different in his orientation person from what you might think of as Mitt Romney economics. Five years ago, Oren founded a think tank called American Compass, which is now central to the kind of populist conservative economics that is driving some of the Trump agenda. It is complicated.

Oren is very pro-tariffs, but he is also a big critic of some of the things Trump and Elon Musk have done this year. He wrote an article in February called Why DOGE will fail on the Trump budget. What Trump calls his Big Beautiful Bill, Oren Cass described it in Politico as, "a death march through a series of choices that nobody wants to make." In general, Cass is trying to reinvent conservative economics to better serve the working class.

Yes, that is different from the way Democrats think economic policy can serve the working class. Cass feels like he is pushing against Republican orthodoxy as a central mission. He has the ear of the administration enough that Politico calls him the GOP's leading economic populist. Oren Cass also has a new book, a collection of writings from the first five years of his American Compass think tank. It is called The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community, and Industry. Oren, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Oren Cass: It is so great to be talking with you again.

Brian Lehrer: You call your book the definitive explanation of the New Right's economic thinking. For people just getting engaged in this, how would you begin to distinguish the New Right from the old right on economics?

Oren Cass: I think a lot of it comes down to just how we think about markets. I think the old right, and it's a very particular period in time, it's beginning with Ronald Reagan up through until Donald Trump. You had a right of center in America that I would say wasn't really conservative at all. They really embraced what I would say is a quite blind faith in markets. I tend to call it market fundamentalism and just trusted that markets deliver the best outcome, and all that government should do is get out of the way.

To be clear, I think markets are great. I certainly think markets are how we should organize our economy. I think the longer-standing traditional conservative view had been and is again becoming that markets also have their limits. Markets are a means to the end of human flourishing and strong families and communities, and broad-based prosperity. Markets don't deliver those things automatically. You need constraints on them, you need to channel their forces in various ways.

I think on all sorts of fronts, what book is ultimately about is trying to explain some things that maybe look crazy. Why is there a labor union president speaking at the Republican National Convention? Why are Republicans turning against free trade? Why are we talking about industrial policy? All of those things, I think, come back down to a recognition among conservatives that markets frankly need some help.

Brian Lehrer: How would this differ from, say, a center-left Democrat who might also say, yes, we don't want to overthrow our capitalist economy, but there has been too much market fundamentalism, as you put it, on the right, and we need to make sure that government policy intersects with markets properly or constructively to help people who the markets by themselves don't lift up. How would that be different from, say, a center-left Democrat?

Oren Cass: I think one place where I would say there's a lot more in common and is very encouraging is I think you're seeing more commonality in the diagnosis of the problem, which we should want to have in our politics. We should want, whether you're on the left, you're on the right, to some extent, have a shared understanding of the facts. Are things going well in this country? Are there problems? Are markets doing what we need them to?

I think you're right that we're seeing a lot more commonality all the way from Elizabeth Warren over to Josh Hawley on concern about some real problems that we have. I think there are a few big differences, though, when we get to, okay, what would you do-- Some of which is about the ends. What do we actually think the goal is? What does success look like? Then, some about what role do we think public policy should play? I think what we've seen in the left of center, generally speaking, in addressing these kinds of problems is essentially asking, how can government step in and do the things that markets can't?

There tends to be much more focus on, for instance, redistribution. How do we have more programs to support people who are falling behind in the economy, who have seen stagnating wages? We see a big focus on the so-called care economy and the idea that we want to somehow make sure that people don't necessarily have to worry about how to take care of their kids, how to take care of elderly parents, and so forth. Lastly, I think we just see a different set of priorities. I think the center left obviously cares about working people, too, but the evidence is certainly they care less about them than they care about fighting climate change.

They care less about them than they care about essentially refusing to enforce our immigration laws. At this point, they seem to care less about them than they care about actually confronting China and others on unfair trade practices. I think what you're seeing from conservatives now is two things. One, a clear articulation that the goal is we want to have markets that create good jobs so that your typical worker earns enough to support a family.

That shouldn't be controversial, even though some people manage to take offense at it. We're going to have to make trade-offs to get there. As we think about trade-offs with the environment, as we think about trade-offs with immigration, as we think about trade-offs with trade, actually getting the economy right and getting markets right and getting them focused on improving jobs and working conditions for typical workers really has to be at the top of the list.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly, people on the left will take umbrage with some of the things that you were saying about not being centrally concerned with the well-being of all our families on the basis of some of those other things that you cited. I want to focus in on the part of what you said about economic policy in particular to achieve that end. You talked about government intervention being more obviously something that the left advocates.

Let's say Bernie Sanders, for example, might say Medicare for all, free public college, universal child care, support strong unions, high minimum wage, raise taxes on the rich. They'll still be rich and still have incentives to start businesses and create jobs. I'm oversimplifying, but how much of that do you disagree with? They would argue that if you have all of those things, you have created the conditions for families to be comfortable, for communities to form, for people to flourish.

Oren Cass: I think there are certainly, again, elements of some of those things that I'm interested in as well in terms of the policies you described. I think it's telling, even as you run through those things, free public college for all, for instance, most Americans, and we've done survey research on this at American Compass, are frankly incredibly disenchanted with what our higher education system offers. If you ask them, would they prefer a three-year apprenticeship that leads to a good job or free tuition to any college they or their kids can get into, by pretty sizable margin, they actually say they would prefer the apprenticeship leading to the good job. If you ask them whether they want free child care or the ability to actually have a parent at home with young children, by overwhelming margins, they say they would rather have a parent at home with young children. By the way, it's women-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. No, you go ahead.

Oren Cass: It's women who say that by the largest margin. I think what you've actually outlined quite well-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Does that mean that you would support enough of a living wage guarantee that there could be more single-earner, two-parent families than there are?

Oren Cass: Again, I don't know what you mean by living wage guarantee. The only guarantee of a living wage is an economy that's actually generating good, high-productivity jobs that pay a living wage. Again, I think this is a place where the Bernie Sanders type view of the world, that maybe could we just somehow command the things that we want, really falls short. If you want the typical job to pay enough to support a family so that that family then really does have choices about how they want to organize their family life, you're going to have to make some trade-offs, and you're going to have to focus on certain kinds of outcomes.

I appreciate you saying vaguely, I'm sure Democrats would disagree with my characterization, but empirically, this is simply where their focus has been on these other issues, not on wages for working families. I think the Biden administration is essentially a very good example of this, where if you look at where they picked the big fights, where they really invested their political capital and our tax dollars, it was in massive investments on trying to combat climate change. It was in massive forgiveness of student loans for those who had gone to college. It was on a policy at the border and with respect to immigration enforcement that completely discounted the interests of working Americans.

I think what you're seeing from conservatives it's, yes, obviously we all want good things in a strong economy and happy families, but at the end of the day, the question is, are we going to prioritize that and put that first? I think what you're seeing, I'd be the first to say there was a time when I don't think the right of center put that front and center the way they needed to. They had other priorities. They had higher. I think what you're seeing from the new conservatives is a real willingness to grapple with these trade-offs and say no, the outcomes for workers really need to be at the top of the list.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some calls and texts for Oren Cass, founder of the American Compass think tank, proponent of what he calls New Right economics as opposed to orthodox conservative economics, and author now of The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community and Industry. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Ask him a question, engage in some debate, or whatever. 212-433-9692, call or text.

On the Trump budget bill, in your interview with Politico last month, they describe you saying there are a handful of provisions that appeal to those trying to move away from Republican economic orthodoxy. On the whole, it's a messy hodgepodge of conventional conservative priorities that won't do much to help working-class Trump voters or the broader public. Did they get that about right in describing your views on the bill?

Oren Cass: Yes. When it comes to the bill, I think what we're seeing is just the fascinating point of transition that we're at in the Republican Party. If you think back to 2017 at the start of the first Trump term, he comes into office, you have very conventional Treasury Secretary and economic advisors. You have Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House. It was basically great. We're going to do a big tax cut, and let's see how big a tax cut we can do. That sailed through.

I think what you're seeing this time is the struggle with the fact that that's not where the coalition is at this point. Obviously, there are still lots of people from 2017 who are still around who basically just want to renew it. Then I think quite encouragingly, you're seeing a lot more folks who say, wait a minute, we can't afford this. You're seeing some folks like Josh Hawley saying, "Wait a minute, we can't be focusing on making these spending cuts."

In some cases, you have other folks like Chip Roy saying, "Maybe we should consider raising the corporate tax rate." Obviously, both Trump and Secretary of the Treasury Bessent said they were open to higher tax rates on high-income households as well. I think they are searching for, and it is an ongoing struggle now to see, can they find something that everybody will vote for? Certainly, my concern is that at the end of the day, that isn't likely to be something that's best aligned with what the American economy needs, but I'm encouraged by the direction that things are shifting.

Brian Lehrer: You told Politico that the word conventional might actually be a little generous insofar as a conventional Republican tax package, talking about the bill, actually starts from a motivating idea that people are excited about. A quote from you. You don't think people, at least those open to the Republican Party, are excited about making the Trump tax cuts permanent? Trump emphasizes that the alternative is a big tax hike if Congress lets them expire.

Oren Cass: That exact characterization, I think, speaks to the challenge here, which is that in 2017, they passed a bill and scheduled the tax cuts to expire. There are a bunch of technical reasons they did that. As a result, they now find themselves in this position where the grenade that the Republican Party itself pulled the pin on is about to explode. I think, obviously, nobody likes to see taxes go up. I think the flip side is it's really interesting to think about a hypothetical world where whatever was done in 2017 had been done on a permanent basis.

You didn't have 2025 teed up as this big set of expiring tax cuts. What would have been the focus of this administration? What would have been the focus of this Congress? I think it would have been very different. I think, comparing to when Reagan comes into office in 1981, when George W. Bush comes in in 2001, first time Trump comes in in 2017, this time around, I think you would have seen a lot more focus on other issues.

The administration is obviously doing a lot on trade, on immigration, on manufacturing, and the defense industrial base, on education, and so forth. My sense, certainly, even as you see them talking about it, is that they feel like they need to extend or try to make permanent this thing that they voted for back in 2017. I don't think "let's let's grow the economy by cutting taxes" is really the central message now, the way that it used to be.

Brian Lehrer: Where are you on the Medicaid cuts in the bill? Half a trillion dollars worth. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 11 million people would lose their health insurance. Of course, the Democrats and some Republicans, Josh Hawley and others, are saying, no, this isn't what the working class needs. There are a lot of working people with low enough incomes that they qualify for Medicaid. Where are you on that, and as part of New Right economics?

Oren Cass: I think the reality is that we do need to bring spending down. A $2 trillion deficit means we are consuming 2 trillion more of government-provided services than we are willing to pay for right now in this country. We do need to close that gap for all sorts of reasons. I think there's a lot of room actually to bring some of this spending down, and I think the best way to see it is just to compare what we're spending now to what we were spending before COVID.

The reality is that a lot of the expansion that we allowed to happen during COVID, rightly so, didn't then retract again afterward. That's a very dangerous formula. If you expand during the emergency and don't contract again after the emergency, things can get out of control. I think the problem is that we also do have to look at the revenue side. It's also true that we're not collecting nearly enough revenue to pay for the things we do need. While I'd like to see us get serious about the spending and accept that we are going to have to reduce spending and reduce benefits in some cases, I think it's incredibly important that you pair that with also accepting that taxes need to go up, especially on high-income households.

That, essentially, everyone is being asked to take a hit to some extent. Whereas if we say that we need all of those spending reductions and then turn around and don't actually use that savings to close our budget deficit, we use that savings to hold down tax rates for high-income households. That feels a lot less fair to me, certainly a lot less aligned with what I think working-class voters wanted and what's in the interests of workers, and I don't think it's very good for the economy in the long run.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting a number of listeners who want to push back on one particular thing that you said before. I'm going to let Diane in Brooklyn represent the group. Diane, you're on WNYC with Oren Cass. Hello?

Diane: Yes, hi. I just want to talk about the effect of climate change on people's lives. That is really the elephant in the room as an economic issue. That it's devastating communities now and it's a major economic issue and the effects on communities is only going to be the devastation is only going to be increasing.

Brian Lehrer: Diane, I'm going to leave it there. I'll read one other text on this. Listener writes, "20-year-old listener. I think a lot of folks don't understand how important fighting climate change is to our generation. Fighting the climate crisis and providing for working families are not mutually exclusive." You want to talk back to those listeners talking back to you?

Oren Cass: Sure. Look, I think this is a perfect illustration of a real problem on the left of center right now, which is that the mythology of climate change is allowing it to trample on what is actually in the interests of working people. To be clear, when I say the mythology of climate change, I don't mean that climate change is a myth. I think climate change is a very serious challenge that we're going to have to cope with. If you want to say that you're following the science and you're understanding accurately the predictions, you need to move away from some of the political rhetoric and look at the actual models.

The actual models that estimate the economic impact of climate change over a 100 period on the United States suggest that the impact is simply not that large, on the order of a few percentage points of GDP, not per year, but total. When you think about the kind of costs in terms of what that means in natural disasters or otherwise, again, there are absolutely real costs there, but they are not at all commensurate with the idea that they are the major challenge facing this country.

The second related issue, then, is that the things that we do in response need to actually have some efficacy. If the United States building a lot of wind turbines and solar panels was actually going to solve the problem, was going to reduce those costs significantly, there could be a good case for that. The reality is that in fact, what happens with climate change over this century is almost entirely a function of what the developing world chooses to do with this energy policy.

What we have in this country, unfortunately, is a left-of-center that has tried to construct this case. If climate change is your issue, that's fine. You have to acknowledge that you are choosing to prioritize that in a way that sends hundreds of billions of dollars in resources directly away from typical working families, typical working-class households. There is a trade-off there. If that's the trade-off you want to make, that's fine; stand up and defend it. Don't call in and say, "Actually, there's no conflict here. Actually, what the working people of America most need is a Green New Deal because the economic evidence simply does not support that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, from their point of view, that's why they paired New Deal in the FDR sense with the green part, but we'll follow up on that. [crosstalk]

Oren Cass: No, but let me make a quick point about that, though, Brian, because this is an important point. The problem with calling the Green New Deal good economic policy is that you have to recognize that what you're doing is not actually creating new economic opportunity. You are replacing an existing, very strong, robust energy sector and industrial economy that provides a lot of very good jobs, particularly in rural parts of the country, away from the coasts.

You're trying to supplant that with an alternative. You're not creating anything new. In fact, in general, the jobs in the newer green version of the industry tend to be much less productive, don't pay as well. This was a huge problem leading to the UAW strike, was that when you say you want to replace conventional vehicles with electric vehicles, what that means for the supply chains, what that means for the quality of the jobs in the auto industry, it goes down. I think the best way, just to think about this, because clearly this is saying, on your listener's mind, I would just pose this hypothetical. Let's say there was no such thing as climate change.

Let's say we didn't have to worry about climate change. Would you still propose a Green New Deal? Would you still say, "Look, we should shut down our industrial economy and fossil fuel energy and replace it with this new thing and spend hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars doing that because we think that's actually just good economic policy/" The answer is, obviously, of course, you wouldn't. You were accepting costs, you were accepting reduction in economic opportunity because you were concerned about the climate change. If that's the trade-off you want to making, that's fine, but don't pretend it's not a trade-off.

Brian Lehrer: We just have two minutes left. In the segment I mentioned in the intro, your article from February called Why DOGE will fail. That was on the news site UnHerd. Now Musk is out, and he and Trump are kind of at war. How much, very briefly, did DOGE succeed or fail under Musk, in your opinion today?

Oren Cass: I think, unfortunately, Musk didn't do a very good job here. What I was writing about was just that he didn't seem to have much understanding of how government worked or what it would take to reform it effectively. I think, to be clear, as we were talking about with the spending earlier, we do need government reform. We need leaner, more efficient, more effective government. I would love to see that be a focus. The way that Musk went about it, I don't think was the right way at all.

I think most people would agree with that, including within the Trump administration at this point. I think what you're seeing is a really interesting now political battle where there are a lot of different elements of the new right-of-center coalition. One question is, what is the role of these sorts of more tech-oriented folks? I think there is a lot that they contribute. There is a lot that they can do productively. But I think we're also seeing where the excesses need to be removed.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Just one follow-up on that, because it relates to Trump and Musk. I'm also curious to hear where you are on this: the accusation that Trump wants to be an authoritarian. I'm curious if you think we have some evidence of that from his post yesterday that said, "The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts." I mean that can look like evidence that Trump makes policy based on loyalty and retribution and hurting anybody who disagrees with him by using government power rather than simply asking, are these subsidies and contracts good for America? To many people, that's going to sound like classic authoritarianism. I'm curious if to you.

Oren Cass: Yes, it sounds to me like two people feuding on Twitter. I think we should definitely be very vigilant to be concerned about authoritarianism, and we should watch the actual actions the government takes in that respect. I think focusing on Twitter feuds, as I always remind people, with whatever is going on on Twitter, even if it is the president and the richest man in the world tweeting at each other, Twitter is not real life.

Brian Lehrer: Are they going in that direction in the Trump administration in general, beyond this particular little Twitter spat, as you call it? He tried to overturn the 2020 election, pardoning the January Six Rioters, using the presidency in part to enrich himself, saying he might disobey judges, try to stay in office after two terms. Maybe authoritarianism, authoritarian wannabe, no big deal. Like 20 seconds, but where are you on that spectrum?

Oren Cass: I don't think it's reasonable to give me that list and tell me I have 20 seconds to try to address it. I'll just reiterate what I said, which is I think we should be very vigilant, regardless of who is in power, about checks and balances and the rule of law. I also think we should recognize that now, it's certainly been 10 years with Trump in the political system, and it seems to me our political system continues to operate fairly well.

Brian Lehrer: Oren Cass, founder five years ago of the think tank American Compass, now author of the book The New Conservatives: Restoring America’s Commitment to Family, Community and Industry. Oren, we always appreciate when you come on with us. Thank you very much.

Oren Cass: Thank you, Brian.

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