Click here to subscribe to the Roosevelt Institute's weekly newsletter.
We've all heard the standard arguments about the stimulus: progressives think it should have been bigger, while conservatives think it was a pork-filled monstrosity. But in the latest episode of the Roosevelt Institute's Bloggingheads series, Fireside Chats, Mike Konczal talks to Michael Grunwald, author of The New New Deal, about four stronger criticisms of the bill from the left.
Konczal notes that it probably wouldn't have been possible to pass a larger stimulus through Congress, but his first question is "Why didn't we have a WPA? President Roosevelt went out in one month and hired like four million people," so if we're facing a similar jobs crisis now, "why don't we just go and hire five million people to do whatever?"
Next, the Michaels discuss President Obama's rhetorical pivot toward deficit reduction and "the idea that you couldn't pass the first stimulus, you couldn't do more to expand the economy, without also bringing down the long-term debt," which led Obama to "straitjacket himself on this issue of worrying about the bond market."
Third, Konczal argues that "President Obama very much looked at how to attack the problem of unemployment as a budgetary phenomenon as opposed to using every lever at his disposal," including the Federal Reserve and the nationalized GSEs. Rather, he chose to "kick the can on housing, hoping unemployment would come down in two years."
Finally, Konczal says "the New Deal brought in kind of a new contract with government" that involved the creation of a safety net and a much stronger role for the federal government in the economy. He and Grunwald explore whether Obama's policies have the potential to create another paradigm shift that is "fundamentally a new kind of social reality, a political reality."
For more, including details on what was actually in the stimulus and how it reflected President Obama's broader agenda, check out the full video below: