Democrats: Please Listen to Larry Summers

Party has ditched his wise stimulus ideas of summer

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:27 PM CST

(Newser) – Throughout 2008 Larry Summers was proposing the right kind of stimulus—fast, targeted, and temporary. “Poorly provided fiscal stimulus can have worse side effects than the disease,” he warned. Now Summers is a top Obama adviser, but Democrats are ignoring his every proviso. The stimulus is a “sprawling, lobbyist-driven mess that does nothing well,” writes David Brooks of the New York Times, and the side effects will be awful.

The Democrats’ bill is a mish-mash of temporary measures and permanent ones, of the targeted and the untargeted. Obviously Democrats were trying to push through an agenda they believe in, but it’s insane to try to tackle dozens of problems and a complicated recession in one bill. Measures are left open-ended and nothing is paid for. It’s a fiscal quagmire, and “there is no exit strategy.”

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Republican senators explain their opposition to President Barack Obama's financial stimulus package during a news conference at the Capitol, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In this Jan. 28, 2009 file photo, President Barack Obama is joined by business executives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

Larry Summers had the right idea - so why has Obama abandoned it? (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

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This recession is scary and complicated. It’s insane to try to tackle it and dozens of other complicated problems, all in one piece of legislation. - David Brooks

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Democrats: Please Listen to Larry Summers