Thursday, May 26, 2016

Larry Summers, the Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget, and the abandonment of fiscal policy [feedly]

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Larry Summers, the Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget, and the abandonment of fiscal policy
// Economic Policy Institute Blog

Federal budget season came and went this year without any budget proposal hitting the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. This was an odd (and ironic) bit of incompetence by the GOP leadership, who couldn't even wrangle a majority to support their own budget proposal. But it was especially damaging to U.S. economic policy debates because it limited attention paid to the budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

It's true that political gridlock has meant the only live macroeconomic policy debate in DC in recent years has been around monetary policy. And the Fed's decisions are important! But the abandonment of fiscal policy as a tool that could boost the economy, which began not soon after the recovery from the Great Recession began, is a real tragedy.

The need to resuscitate fiscal policy was usefully underscored in a widely-discussed speech by former Treasury Secretary and National Economic Council Chair Larry Summers earlier this week. Because the CPC and Larry Summers are perhaps not always thought of as completely in sync in policy debates, it's worth noting that Summers's remarks can be read as a ringing endorsement of the CPC budget. Some examples:

"I am here to tell you that the most important determinant of our long term fiscal picture is how successful we are at accelerating the economy's growth rate in the next three to five years, not the austerity measures that we implement."

The CPC budget includes substantial upfront fiscal stimulus (mostly front-loaded infrastructure investments projects) precisely to accelerate the economy's growth rate in the near-term.

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