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“If we know anything about recessions, it’s that the recovery, especially for people with lower levels of education, is going to take longer,” Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, told the Post. “It’s going to take us a long time to get out of this, and the aid in this bill doesn’t last for long enough.” There’s this, too. “Even if Congress gets their act together and passes this stimulus tonight, it won’t make a big impact for weeks,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Many states will have to reengineer creaky unemployment systems again, so that will take time. The $600 stimulus checks will likely be swallowed up immediately by long past-due bills and rent. And there is no funding beyond some education and transportation support, along with vaccine distribution money for state and local governments, which have already bled employees—1.3 million since November of last year. More public sector job cuts and tax hikes are likely. “It’s $900 billion, but it’s not a particularly well-designed package,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capitol Economics. “It won’t include any direct transfers to state and local governments, which gets you the biggest bang for the buck.”
“You need to go big to get the economy going again,” said Glenn Hubbard, the former chief economist to President George W. Bush and former dean of Columbia Business School. “President Biden will need something like a big infrastructure program that commits to spend money over several years to give people much more confidence that the economy won’t slip back.” It’s not nearly enough because, with a Democratic administration about to take over, Republicans all of the sudden feel the need to pretend they care about the deficit again and aren’t willing to spend more. (Which is yet another reason we have to get Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock elected, to keep those deficit peacocks from ruining absolutely everything.)
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