With help from Myah Ward and Renuka Rayasam

WHAT’S IN A NAME? To crudely paraphrase Shakespeare, that which we call a bill can smell more or less sweet depending on its name.

President Joe Biden started his party’s journey to christening his 2021 legislative agenda in late March, when he outlined an infrastructure pitch that we initially pegged at more than $2 trillion. He followed that a month later with a social policy package originally estimated at $1.8 trillion. As those twin pillars went through the tortured fits and starts of what became a “two-track approach” (name one, for the process) to unite moderates and progressives behind both proposals, the infrastructure bill became known as “BIF,” an acronym for “Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework” (name two). That Beltway-centric acronym persisted among reporters, not to mention some lawmakers and aides, long after the F became a B (bill) and even an L (law), despite not exactly rolling off the tongue. The White House itself went with Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal.

The social policy portion of Biden’s huge swing has also acquired many names. Perhaps the least helpful to the party has been the “reconciliation” bill (name three), since it — like “two-track” — refers to the process Democrats are using to get the legislation passed rather than anything in the bill itself. The names “jobs” and “families” have also been used as shorthand for the infrastructure and social policy bills, respectively (names four and five), before the formal label of “Build Back Better Act” (name six) caught on enough to inspire a “Schoolhouse Rock”-style costumed bill who posed for pictures with House Democrats last week.

There’s also the formal name of the legislation that settled for “BIF” for too long! It’s called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (name seven in total for the agenda).

If you’re exhausted by the terminology crush, your feelings are shared by quite a few folks who work full-time on tracking the bill. And the lack of a consistent, digestible shorthand to describe Biden’s ambitious set of domestic pillars really matters — especially when it comes to selling the legislation to voters, as Renuka Rayasam covered for Nightly last month.

More than simply marketing the two bills, at this point Democrats are selling themselves: The more down-to-earth they sound talking about their goals, the more likely their incumbents and candidates are to connect with the people who have to hire them every two or six years. And the awkward labels for the infrastructure and social policy bills only distance both the public and Congress from their core provisions, which tend to poll well. (Although a recent Morning Consult poll found a plurality of voters predicting the families/BBB/reconciliation bill will worsen inflation.)

When Shakespeare’s Juliet raised the question of what’s in a name, she was musing on the man-made power of an appellation to keep her from her true love in another family, at odds with hers. (“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy.”) Yet her creator also knew the power of a well-titled story to rivet centuries of readers. We’re not in the business of helping either party do their jobs, but just sayin’: “Roads-and-Rails” and “Health-and-Kids” are two names with exactly as many syllables as “Romeo” and “Juliet” that would have given Democrats a far catchier line.

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FED UP — Biden said today he will reappoint Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a move that keeps Powell in the government’s most powerful economic post as rising inflation spooks the country. Powell will likely face pressure from fellow Fed officials, some of whom believe the central bank should take aggressive action to stamp out rising prices, economics reporter Victoria Guida wrote today.

How should not just Powell and the Fed, but the whole of the federal government, respond to rising inflation? Nightly’s Myah Ward asked economists for their ideas. These responses have been edited.

“President Biden should continue his efforts to improve supply chains by, for example, increasing port capacity. He should take additional steps; the most important would be to reduce tariffs that are raising prices for Americans.

“But none of this will do that much — to really make a big difference the Federal Reserve will need to do more. The Fed is the primary agency responsible for controlling inflation, and it needs to shift its communications, be clearer about caring about both unemployment and inflation, taper asset purchases more quickly, and set a default path of three rate hikes for next year.” — Jason Furman, economic policy professor at Harvard and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017

“Biden needs to look like he’s trying to combat surging prices. That’s politics. But if his economists are correct, inflation will simply fade away. Already the impact of $3 trillion in stimulus is starting to wane. And there are hints global bottlenecks are beginning to clear. The mismatch between supply and demand might slowly be returning to balance.

“But Biden shouldn’t assume all will be well in 2022. Rising inflation expectations suggest a non-zero risk that higher prices may prove sticky.

“So first, no more stimulus, no new deficit spending bills. And be careful with calls to investigate Corporate America for raising prices. Political uncertainty could chill business investment, which the economy needs to boost productive capacity. Higher productivity is anti-inflationary.

“Second, don’t let even a transitory crisis go to waste. Argue for anti-inflationary deregulation in pricey sectors such as housing, healthcare, and education. Examples: loosen restrictive zoning, let nurses do more, make colleges responsible when loan-burdened students don’t graduate.

“Third, if inflation persists, the Powell Fed (assuming the Senate approves a second term for the current chair) will need to act. Biden needs to give the central bank his full support, both privately and publicly.” — James Pethokoukis, economic policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the Faster, Please! Substack newsletter

“We need federal policies that will help tackle the root causes of inflation: shortages that are the direct result of decades of disinvestment in our supply chains and the corporate extraction that has weakened our economy’s responsiveness to crises.

“Policymakers must take on the extractive corporate actors that are getting rich off of people’s pain. This means cracking down on pandemic profiteers and price gouging, and taxing corporations and the wealthy.

“The privatization of supply chains has resulted in a reliance on precarious labor that is a significant liability to supply chain resiliency. Shoring up the quality of jobs and addressing misclassification issues will not only help workers who move goods we all depend on, but also strengthen supply chains as a whole — creating a system that is able to withstand shocks.” — Rakeen Mabud, chief economist and managing director of policy and research, Groundwork Collaborative

“First, the Federal Reserve should increase the pace of its taper of asset purchases and end the ambiguity about how long it will let inflation run above target to make up for past shortfalls. This would likely require a clear timeline for rate liftoff beginning in 2022.

“Second, the federal government should address the stalled recovery in the labor force. This would include reintroducing work requirements into the expanded Child Tax Credit and other transfers, as was done in the 2017 expansion of the CTC. To incentivize continued labor force participation among older workers who left the workforce in 2020-21, the government could make the 2017 marginal personal income tax rate reductions permanent. I would avoid further large increases in fiscal transfers that merely fuel demand without raising supply.

“Finally, the government should make permanent the full expensing of new business investment in equipment, and rule out corporate income tax hikes. This would help close the $1.8 trillion shortfall in business investment since the pandemic began, which constitutes a 1 percent hit to potential output.

“Despite the focus on ports and supply chains, prudent monetary policy and fiscal policy that encourages labor force participation and business investment are ultimately much bigger issues.” — Tyler Goodspeed, Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and acting chair and vice chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021

“The whipsaw of shutdowns and restarts across economic sectors precipitated by Covid-19 remains the main driver of inflation. The virus led spending to rush away from services towards goods, and the Delta variant gummed up supply chains around the world. Virus containment remains the most important economic priority.

“In the meantime, the Covid-19 inflation shock is being muffled, not amplified, by the labor market as average wage growth lags inflation. This has been tough on working families but means harsh medicine meant to stop wage-price spirals is not needed. The Federal Reserve’s decision to slowly reduce monthly asset purchases was prudent, providing a strong signal that inflation stability remains a crucial part of its mandate. But that’s enough for now.” — Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute

“The blunt way we conduct monetary policy — near-zero interest rates and large-scale asset purchases — artificially drives up asset prices, including real estate. This has the dual effect of increasing rents and compounding pre-existing wealth gaps in our society. The Federal Reserve would do well to embrace the spirit of its targeted pandemic-era innovations such as the Municipal Liquidity Facility and the Main Street Lending Program. On the fiscal side, extending targeted policies such as the enhanced child tax credit and the expanded earned income tax credit — as called for in the Build Back Better Act — would help families weather the continuing economic fallout of the pandemic.” — Demond Drummer, managing director, equitable economy at PolicyLink

Nightly asks you: Is there something you really want or need to buy, whether for the holiday season or just an everyday item, that you’ve noticed is far more expensive or seemingly impossible to get? Send us your responses using our form, and we’ll share some answers Wednesday.

— Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Roger Stone and Alex Jones: The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is charging ahead with subpoenas on some longtime denizens of Trump World: InfoWars head Alex Jones, self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone, and rally promoters Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence. The committee is also subpoenaing former President Donald Trump’s current spokesperson, Taylor Budowich. Jones and Stone gave speeches to Trump supporters on Jan. 5, urging them to push back against the election results.

— Parnell suspends Pennsylvania Senate campaign: Sean Parnell, who was endorsed in the race by former President Donald Trump and has been the frontrunner in the Republican primary, lost a fight for custody of his children earlier today to his estranged wife, who had accused him of abuse in court testimony. Parnell called Trump to inform him of the decision to suspend his campaign.

— Biden eyes SPR crude oil release: The Biden administration is expected to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in coordination with other nations in the coming days in a bid to tamp down the recent increase in gasoline prices, people familiar with the effort said today. The U.S. release is expected to be between 30 million and 35 million barrels and would be carried out over time, one of the people said. The administration is currently trying to coordinate concurrent releases with foreign governments, including those in China and Japan, a process that has complicated the timing for an announcement, two of the people added.

— Hochul dominates gubernatorial field in early poll: Gov. Kathy Hochul is maintaining a healthy lead over her toughest challenger, state Attorney General Tish James, in her bid to win a term in her own right next year, according to a new Data for Progress poll shared with POLITICO. Hochul leads James 36-22 when the poll includes former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in August and has made no moves to reclaim his old seat. When he is omitted from the poll, the 15 percent support he received is fairly evenly divided among Hochul, James and others trailing the frontrunners.

— Rep. Peter Welch launches Senate bid for Leahy’s seat: Vermont Rep. Peter Welch announced today he will run for Senate next year to fill the seat held by retiring Sen. Patrick Leahy. It was widely anticipated that Welch would launch a bid for Leahy's seat. As the representative for Vermont’s at-large House district since 2007, Welch is the only other member of the state’s congressional delegation besides independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.

‘VACCINATED, CURED OR DEAD’ — Germans will be “vaccinated, cured or dead” by the end of this winter, Health Minister Jens Spahn said today, as he rushed out extra doses of the coronavirus jab from BioNTech and Pfizer to inject into the arms of the one-third of people in the country who are still not vaccinated, Laurenz Gehrke writes.

Germany is experiencing record Covid-19 caseloads in the current fourth wave of the pandemic, putting hospital intensive care units under increasing strain — with unvaccinated patients far more likely to become critically ill.

“Probably by the end of this winter pretty much everyone in Germany — as has sometimes been cynically put — will be vaccinated, cured or dead," Spahn told a hastily arranged press conference, in his starkest warning to date of the risks of holding out against vaccination.

Spahn angered doctors last week by rationing scarce supplies of the vaccine devised by Mainz-based startup BioNTech, which is in favor thanks to its “Made in Germany” status, while saying no limits would apply to the distribution of doses from U.S. biotech company Moderna.

GAETZGATE FALLOUT — A Florida businessman pleaded guilty today to involvement in an effort to extort $25 million from the wealthy father of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as part of a bizarre scheme that involved a pledge to secure a presidential pardon for Gaetz in the high-profile federal sex trafficking investigation the lawmaker faces, Josh Gerstein writes.

Stephen Alford, 62, appeared in federal court in Pensacola to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud in connection with the convoluted shakedown, which also included securing the release of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

During the hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Timothy recommended that Alford’s guilty plea be accepted. Alford, of Fort Walton Beach, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 at his sentencing, set for Feb. 16 before U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers. Defendants typically get a sentence far below the maximum, but Alford could face a stiff prison term because he has prior federal convictions for fraud.

After being approached about the alleged pardon deal earlier this year, Matt Gaetz’s father Don went to the FBI. Agents helped the elder Gaetz, a wealthy former Florida state Senate leader, record meetings with Alford and others involved in the caper.