Politico Playbook ecstatic that guy who is always wrong is wrong again
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The Washington Post, for some reason, gave Larry “women are too dumb to teach at Harvard” Summers space to urge Congress to make exactly the same mistake it made during the last major recession, when — largely at his urging — it greatly undershot to necessary stimulus, leading to a bloodbath in the midterm elections that has major implications to this day. Needless to say, this got Politico Playbook to do things I thought were inappropriate for a family website:
WHAT BRIAN DEESE IS READING: this provocative LARRY SUMMERS op-ed in WaPo about the Biden stimulus plan that’s being circulated on the left like samizdat.
Summers, the former Treasury secretary for BILL CLINTON and top economic adviser to BARACK OBAMA, puts down on paper what many liberal wonks have been whispering about for weeks: that President JOE BIDEN’S stimulus bill may be too big, that its overall cost could sacrifice other progressive priorities and that it could harm the economy next year, when Democrats will be defending narrow congressional majorities in the midterms.
Do they pretend to take Summers’s assertions that this is really about not crowding out other progressive priorities (that this bill wouldn’t actually prevent from being passed, but that the current rules of the Senate certainly would) at face value? Of course! Would they celebrate Democrats when they actually try to pass the rest of an ambitious agenda either way? Ha-ha no.
Anyway, over to you, Senator:
Why would we listen to the economist who admits he went too small last time if he’s warning us to go small again? I swear this town is nuts. It’s like people can only remember thirty names and so they just keep going back to the same people.— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) February 5, 2021
…very good piece on this from Jordan Weissman.