For the incoming Biden administration's economic team, 2021 may be looking a lot like 2009.

In 2009, it was the aftermath of the global financial crisis that confronted the Obama administration; this time it will be the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent recovery as vaccines are rolled out that stands in the way of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and his ambitions for economic reform.

For the many in Biden's team who also served in the Obama administration it may feel like déjà vu. For instance, Janet Yellen, whom Biden has chosen as his Treasury secretary, was tapped by Obama to chair the Federal Reserve in 2014. Brian Deese, Biden's pick as director of the National Economic Council, was a senior adviser to Obama.

There are also similarities in what they are hoping to achieve in office. During Barack Obama's eight years in office with Joe Biden as second in command, the administration's economic policy was centered on increasing taxes on higher-income Americans to fund goals such as universal healthcare, lowering the federal budget deficit and reducing income inequality. Biden's proposed economic policies favor higher taxes on a larger swath of wealthier Americans, more spending and more regulation. Biden's team is also expected to pursue stronger antitrust enforcement of the tech and telecom industries and stricter regulation on domestic oil and gas production.

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Many of Obama's first-term policy goals were sidelined by the Great Recession, which began in 2008 and brought a stimulus package and stricter banking regulation to the congressional forefront. Biden's longer-term economic goals will likely be on pause early in his administration too, as he is forced to deal with the lingering pandemic and the economic crisis it has created.

"Clearly, the first 100 days is going to be crisis management," said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Dealing with the pandemic preempts any philosophy. It's just a practical reality."

Economic philosophy

Biden's economic philosophy also shares a lot with Obama's, and is reflected in the people in his team. As well as Yellen and Deese, Biden has chosen Adewale Adeyemo as Yellen's deputy, who was formerly on Obama's National Economic Council and is president of the Obama Foundation in Chicago. Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton economist who Biden picked to head his Council of Economic Advisers, also served on the council during the Obama administration.

Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, who Biden appointed as members of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick to head the White House budget office, also served in the Obama administration.

"She's not anything like a far leftist, and many wouldn’t even think of her as a progressive," Ian Katz, a director and financial policy analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, said of Yellen.

However, Yellen will certainly focus on labor markets, income inequality and climate change, which could be themes of Biden's economic policy efforts, Katz said.

"Biden's economic policy is basically President Obama's economic policy one level to the left," said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute who focuses on budget, tax and economic policy.

"Biden's not a revolutionary. He's more of an institutionalist who's going to work within the existing system to push it slightly to the left," Riedl said.

Income inequality

The Biden team is inclined to fight income disparity and try to support American workers who have not shared in the growth of GDP, said Jeffrey Frankel, a professor of capital formation and growth at Harvard University.

Since 1984, U.S. GDP has increased 430% while median household income has increased only 30%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Obama's team worked to address income inequality as well through job creation efforts such as a $305 billion infrastructure package passed by Congress in 2015 and an unsuccessful push for a federally mandated increase in the minimum wage.

"I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American," Obama said during a 2013 speech.

Obama's failures

But these efforts yielded little. During Obama's time in the White House, U.S. GDP jumped 29.7% while median household income increased 5.8%.

Economists interviewed for this article said Biden is likely to try to take those efforts further through another push to raise the minimum wage and to pass another, larger infrastructure package.

The impact of an administration's economic policy on markets is debatable. While Obama was trying to address income inequality during his eight years in office, the S&P 500 increased 130.9% and the index's energy sector jumped about 8.5% in spite of a regulatory push viewed as harmful to the industry. The S&P 500's energy sector has fallen 22.8% since Donald Trump took office despite regulations viewed as industry-friendly.

Ultimately, what Biden's economic team will wrestle with is creating growth while appeasing factions of Democrats who view such growth as distributed unfairly and creating environmental damage, Goodman said.

"Biden is a moderate, and he's not going to reject growth," he said, adding that Biden would likely focus his growth policies on benefiting workers, rather than markets or corporations. "I think he sees that it’s possible to grow and to be economically prosperous and successful, but also to be inclusive and address the challenges of the workers and pull more groups into the economic success story."

The more ambitious economic goals of the incoming administration will be reined in by Republicans if they retain control of the Senate by winning at least one of the two January runoff elections in Georgia. A Republican Senate would prevent Biden from doing much on tax policy or altering much of Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts, said Katz with Capital Alpha Partners.

"You can talk about someone's approach, or their philosophy," Katz said. "But, after a while if you can't get it done the way it needs to be done legally, then it just becomes an academic exercise."