![]() ![]() ![]() KHALID: This was around the time that President Obama was starting to push for the Affordable Care Act. STEEL: Calling him Sheriff Joe and promising rigorous oversight of this program, it frankly symbolized that the president's priority, his attention, had shifted immediately to health care. KHALID: That last voice is Michael Steel, a former aide to John Boehner, who, at the time, was the Republican leader in the House. MICHAEL STEEL: The impression from our end was that the vice president's role was something of a joke. He was really almost behind the scenes making sure it actually worked. JASON FURMAN: He wasn't even that much the public face of the Recovery Act. He occasionally gave press updates, but Jason Furman, who was the deputy director of the National Economic Council at the time, says that wasn't really what he did. KHALID: Biden's real role was kind of opaque to people outside the White House. KLAIN: The vice president insisted that the recovery implementation office that reported to him, they had what he called the 24-hour rule, which is any question that a governor or mayor raised got an answer within 24 hours. And every week, he held phone calls with a rotating group of bipartisan governors and mayors. KHALID: The vice president traveled the country to see stimulus projects in action. KLAIN: He held meetings with the Cabinet as a whole, the various agencies that are part of this, every other week to try to make sure we were moving quickly. Klain says being accountable also meant being efficient. KHALID: Estimates show around 1% of the roughly $800 billion was ever attributed to waste or fraud. RON KLAIN: We put a real big emphasis on the Recovery Act in transparency and accountability. Ron Klain was his chief of staff at the time. KHALID: Former aides say Biden took it personally if any stimulus dollars were wasted. Vice President, but around the White House, we call him the sheriff. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As part of his duty, Joe will keep an eye on how precious tax dollars are being spent. Here's Obama describing Biden's new role. KHALID: President Obama signed the bill, but then he swiftly handed all the supervision over to his vice president. VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Last year, our economy lost 3 million jobs 600,000 more just this last month.īIDEN: We're here today to start to turn that around. When Biden took the mic, he acknowledged the economy was in a downward spiral. NPR's Asma Khalid has more.ĪSMA KHALID, BYLINE: On the day Barack Obama signed the Recovery Act in February 2009, he explicitly thanked Joe Biden for working behind the scenes to make the legislation possible. Now as Biden seeks the presidency, his handling of that crisis could shape whether voters think he's up to the job of handling this one. The 2009 Recovery Act cost around $800 billion, and the person put in charge of overseeing how a lot of that money was spent was the country's new vice president, Joe Biden. Back then, Congress passed a stimulus package that cut taxes, expanded unemployment support and more. In 2009, like today, the country faced economic peril. ![]()
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