Amity ShlaesCompte certifié

For the fourth time, I’ve come across a Democrat involved in stimulus negotiations in 2008-2009 saying some version of “we could have done nothing and let things get worse, like FDR did.” FDR didn’t do that. You guys should own your own mistakes.

Which moron is this?

One congressional aide; the senior economic policy advisor and later CEA chair; the treasury secretary; the president (that’s four)

I'm guessing that those 4 did NOT say "FDR did nothing", but rather, something more like "without the Obama stimulus and simultaneous measures in 2009, the recession might have turned out like the Great Depression."

Well, you'd guess wrong.

Here's the president: "We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly."

Here's Goolsbee: "Obama could have said, 'Let's not try to pass stimulus right now and let things get so bad that Congress can't not pass it, then we won't be blamed for anything.' That was in many ways FDR's approach in 1932."