Biden’s pick for top WH economist faces Senate grilling

By SEUNG MIN KIM and JOSH BOAK
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s next pick to lead the Council of Economic Advisers is bracing for a barrage of political attacks centered on how the White House has tackled inflation. Jared Bernstein is a longtime member of Biden’s inner circle on economics. But now Republican senators are eager to turn his confirmation fight into a referendum on how effective the White House has been in controlling rising prices and shepherding the economy out of the once-in-a-century pandemic. They plan to highlight Bernstein’s past comments that inflation would be “transitory.”