Establishment The
Truman administration established the Council of Economic Advisers via the
Employment Act of 1946 to provide presidents with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues. It was a step from an "ad hoc style of economic policy-making to a more institutionalized and focused process". The act gave the council the following goals: In 1949 Chairman
Edwin Nourse and member
Leon Keyserling argued about whether the advice should be private or public and about the role of government in economic stabilization. Nourse believed a choice had to be made between "
guns or butter" but Keyserling argued for
deficit spending, asserting that an expanding economy could afford large defense expenditures without sacrificing an increased
standard of living. In 1949, Keyserling gained support from Truman advisors
Dean Acheson and
Clark Clifford. Nourse resigned as chairman, warning about the dangers of budget deficits and increased funding of "wasteful" defense costs. Keyserling succeeded to the chairmanship and influenced Truman's
Fair Deal proposals and the economic sections of
NSC 68 that, in April 1950, asserted that the larger armed forces America needed would not affect living standards or risk the "transformation of the free character of our economy".
1950s–80s During the
1953–54 recession, the CEA, headed by
Arthur Burns, deployed non-traditional
neo-Keynesian interventions, which provided results later called the "steady fifties" wherein many families stayed in the economic "
middle class" with just one family wage-earner. The
Eisenhower administration supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish
Keynesianism as a possible bipartisan economic policy for the nation. Especially important in formulating the CEA response to the recession—accelerating
public works programs, easing credit, and reducing taxes—were Arthur F. Burns and
Neil H. Jacoby. Until 1963, during its first seven years the CEA made five technical advances in policy making, including the replacement of a "cyclical model" of the economy by a "growth model", the setting of quantitative targets for the economy, use of the theories of
fiscal drag and full-employment budget, recognition of the need for greater flexibility in taxation, and replacement of the notion of unemployment as a structural problem by a realization of a low aggregate demand. The 1978
Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act required each administration to move toward
full employment and reasonable price stability within a specific time period. It has been criticized for making CEA's annual economic report highly political in nature, as well as highly unreliable and inaccurate over the standard two or five year projection periods.
1980–present Since 1980, the CEA has focused on sources of economic growth, the
supply side of the economy, and on international issues. On March 12, 2025,
Stephen Miran was confirmed as President Trump's nominee to be the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. ==Organization==