"It is not a top priority" -- Jen Psaki on if the White House is concerned about Ron Klain's tweets
"Ron Klain retweeted a message...that inflation & supply chain issues are ‘high class issues,’ but some of the sharpest price increases...include products that every American buys," Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asked Psaki on Thursday. "Why would [he] tweet that & would you agree that's a little bit tone deaf?"
Psaki responded by saying, "Do you think two tweets means more? I’m just curious."
Psaki then tried to clarify Klain’s tweet, which referred to rising inflation as a "high class problem," by giving "full context."
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"So I think the point here is, what some of these critics are saying is we don’t know if what they’re saying is if what they thought was great was when the unemployment rate was double what it is today," Psaki said. "Or when people were locked in their homes and therefore gas prices were lower. We’re at this point because the unemployment rate has come down and been cut in half because people are buying more goods because people are traveling and because demand is up."
"What the point is here," Psaki added. "Is that we are at this point because we’ve made progress in the economy."
Q Thank you, Jen. The White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, retweeted a message yesterday — not once, but twice — that inflation and supply chain issues are “high class” issues. But some of the sharpest price increases over the last month included products that every American buys: beef products; chicken; egg; regular, unleaded gasoline; laundry equipment; furniture; clothing. The list goes on. Why you would Ron Klain tweet that? And would you agree that that’s a little bit tone deaf?
MS. PSAKI: Do you think two tweets means more? I’m just curious.
So, just for context, what the — what Ron Klain retweeted was a tweet from the former Chairman of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman, where he said — for full context, which I think is important — “Most of the economic problems we’re facing (inflation, supply chains) are high class problems.” What he went on to say is, “We wouldn’t have had them if the unemployment rate was still 10 percent. We would instead have had a much worse problem.”
So I think the point here is: While there are some critics who are saying — what some of these critics are saying is: I don’t — we don’t know if they’re saying that what they thought was great was when the unemployment rate was double what it is today, or when people were locked in their homes and therefore gas prices were lower.
We’re at this point because the unemployment rate has come down and been cut in half, because people are buying more goods, because people are traveling, and because demand is up, and because the economy is turning back on.
So, Jason Furman, of course, is more than capable of speaking or tweeting for himself, obviously, and providing any additional context.
But what the point is here is that — is that we are at this point because we’ve made progress in the economy, and what would be worse, in our view, is if the unemployment rate was at 10 percent, people were out of work, hundreds of thousands of people were still dying of COVID, and people weren’t able to lose their homes. So, that’s the full context.
Q And that’s a much more eloquent way of putting it than the “high class” comment in that tweet. It’s not the first time that Ron Klain’s Twitter has drawn some sharp criticism. Is that something that the White House is addressing at all, given this pushback, this criticism?
MS. PSAKI: Are we addressing the Chief of Staff’s Twitter habits?
Q Yes.
MS. PSAKI: It is not a top priority, I would tell you, at this point in time. The Chief of Staff is out there speaking on his own accord to members of Congress, to the media, frequently, as any chief of staff does. And I think it’s important also for anyone here to be able to tout points that they find interesting, and that’s the purpose of public speech.
Q And then, on the supply chain remedies that we were going through yesterday, there’s been obviously some action from the White House in brokering these agreements, but the private sector is calling for more federal action on things like expanding commercial driver licenses, easing some restrictions.
What is the hesitation? Why hasn’t this happened yet? And is there any concern that if some of these actions aren’t taken right now, at a certain point, it’ll become too late and this problem will just bottleneck further?
MS. PSAKI: They actually have been happening. So the Department of Transportation has been supporting state DMVs for months and months as they return to or even exceed pre-pandemic commercial driver’s license issuance rates, which will allow more people to have commercial driver’s licenses so that they can drive trucks and more trucks that can move goods across the country.
And so, in 2021, an average of 50,000 commercial driver’s license — licenses and learner’s permits were issued each month, which is 14 percent higher than the 2019 monthly average and 60 percent higher than the 2020 monthly average.
The other thing that the Department of Transportation has been doing is expanding hours of service exemptions for truck drivers during the pandemic to support the flow of emergency goods and assistance from some — for some supply chains. So that’s another step.
We also — and so the point is: We’ve been — we’ve been working on these pieces where we — they’ve been in process. And what we announced yesterday was essentially an agreement between the labor unions, who are going to fill the hours — right? — at these ports — an important bottleneck piece — as well as the suppliers who will be using the expanded hours, and the ports themselves which will help move this forward quickly and help reduce some of the delays.
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