NYT
Christina Romer is Barack Obama’s choice to lead his Council of Economic Advisers. In 1994, Romer and her husband, David, wrote an essay entitled “What Ends Recessions?” In the first paragraph, the Romers noted that “economists seem strangely unsure about what to tell policy makers to do to end recessions.”
The Romers surveyed the recessions of the previous 50 years to try to reach some conclusions about what works. “Our central conclusion is that monetary policy alone is a sufficiently powerful and flexible tool to end recessions,” they wrote. Automatic spending policies like unemployment insurance have sometimes helped. Discretionary policies, like tax cuts and stimulus plans, have not been of much use. As they put it: “Discretionary fiscal policy, in contrast, does not appear to have had an important role in generating recoveries.”
The Romers briefly described how different administrations responded to recessions. All the administrations, Democratic and Republican, resisted large-scale fiscal stimulus plans. They didn’t believe they could time a stimulus correctly. They didn’t trust Congress to pass the bills quickly or cleanly. They decided they shouldn’t be making policy in what Kennedy administration economists called “an atmosphere of haste and panic brought on by recession.”
The Romers’ essay exemplifies the economic doctrine that reigned up until a few months ago: fiscal stimulus plans that try to time a recession are dangerous, unproven and unnecessary.
That doctrine has suddenly vanished. But not because we suddenly know how to create effective stimulus plans. Last year, the Congress passed a $165 billion plan that seems to have done almost nothing for the economy. The doctrine has vanished because this recession is deeper than the others and we’ve run out of other stuff to do.
Today there is wide support for fiscal stimulus. It’s just that there is no historical experience to tell us how to do it, and there is no agreement on how to make it work. The economists’ prescriptions are all over the map.
Obama is compelled to jump into unchartered territory, with no compass or guide. He could have chosen to spend the big money that is apparently required in cautious ways. He could have chosen to pick out a few easily implemented policies that could be enacted in a way that is targeted, temporary and timely. He could have chosen to merely cut the payroll tax, boost aid to the states and do infrastructure projects.
But the Obama presidency is going to be defined by his audacious self-confidence. In Thursday’s speech, he vowed to do everything at once. He vowed to throw the big things into the stimulus soup — tax cuts, state aid, road and bridge repair — but also the rest of the pantry. He proposes broadband projects, special education programs, a new power grid, new scientific research, teacher training projects and new libraries.
This will be the most complex piece of legislation in American history, and as if the policy content wasn’t complicated enough, Obama also promised to pass it via Immaculate Conception — through a new legislative process that will transform politics. The process, he said, will be totally transparent. There will be no earmarks, no special-interest pleading. In a direct rebuttal to Federalist No. 10, he called on lawmakers to put aside their parochial concerns and pass the measure in weeks.
And as if that isn’t enough, he promised next month to make repairing Social Security and Medicare a “central part” of his budget. “I’m not out to increase the size of government long-term,” he told John Harwood of The Times.
This is daring and impressive stuff. Obama’s team has clearly thought through every piece of this plan. There’s no plank that’s obviously wasteful or that reeks of special-interest pleading. The tax cut is big and bipartisan. Obama is properly worried about runaway deficits, but he’s spending money on things one would want to do anyway. This is not an attempt to use the crisis to build a European-style welfare state.
The problem is overload. Four months ago, no one knew how to put together a stimulus package. Now Obama wants to use it to rush through instant special-ed programs and pre-Ks. Repairing the power grid means clearing complex regulatory hurdles. How is he going to do that in time to employ workers in May?
His staff will be searching for the White House restrooms, and they will have to make billion-dollar decisions by the hour. He is asking Congress to behave and submit in a way it never has. He has picked policies that are phenomenally hard to implement, let alone in weeks. The conventional advice for presidents is: focus your energies on a few big things. Obama just blew the doors off that one.
Maybe Obama can pull this off, but I have my worries. By this time next year, he’ll either be a great president or a broken one.
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