Summers on the Stimulus

Via Calculated Risk.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me start out by putting up a little chart that shows the House and Senate versions of this stimulus package. Let me show our viewers that right now. The overall cost is about the same, the House $820 billion, Senate $827 billion, but the composition different. The Senate has about $100 billion more in tax cuts, but $40 billion less in state aid, $20 billion less in education, $15 billion less in payments to individuals, some other differences.

I know that, when the president was meeting with these moderate Republican senators this week, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, he told them he endorsed their efforts to scrub the bill of what they called excessive spending. Does that mean the president prefers the Senate version to the House version?

SUMMERS: No, the president feels that, above all, we need a major program enacted very quickly that will create 3 million to 4 million jobs. He believes we need to perfect it in every way we can.

If there are programs that aren't going to serve important purposes, they should be -- they should be eliminated. He certainly believes that. He's open to good ideas from both -- from both sides.

But we're going to have to look at both these bills, assuming the Senate bill passes, as most people expect at this juncture, and craft the best possible approach going forward.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: Some of the critics of the Senate bill say that the most important elements have been -- have been brought down. Paul Krugman, writing on his blog this morning, said, "Some of the most effective and most needed parts of the plan have been cut." He's citing especially that $40 billion in state aid.

And he goes on to say that, "My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years."

SUMMERS: There's no question we need -- we need a large, forthright approach here. There are crucial areas, support for higher education, that are things that are in the House bill that are very, very important to the president.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But will the Senate bill produce fewer jobs?

SUMMERS: There's no question -- no question what we've got to do is go after support for education. And there are huge problems facing state and local governments, and that could lead to a vicious cycle of layoffs, falling home values, lower property taxes, more layoffs. And we've got to prevent that.

So we're going to have to try to come together in the conference. And the president is certainly going to be active in sharing his views as that process -- as that process...

Ugh! It looks like my initial optimism on the Obama administration was naive. I'm slowly getting scared that our economy will not rebound. I am so sick of hearing about eliminating the programs that "serve no purpose." All of them serve a purpose. The purpose is creating jobs and boosting aggregate demand. But rather than focusing on cutting the fat of the bill, we should be worried about including things that will help state and local governments. And unfortunately, aside from adding tax cuts, the Senate version of the stimulus bill eliminated that sort of aid.How many more concessions will the Obama administration make before realizing that he is not a Republican? When will this stop???