During an interview aired on Tuesday’s edition of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) stated that the American Rescue Plan was “Absolutely” too large, but most of the COVID spending occurred under President Donald Trump and he would vote for “virtually all of this legislation” if he had to do it over again. He also argued that the American Rescue Plan “has not been the sole driving force” behind inflation.
Host David Westin asked, “Hindsight’s 20/20, but do you have any regrets at all about the American Rescue Plan? Because the Fed may be too late. But Congress was pretty early with a lot of stimulus.”
Warner answered, “Was there too much in the American Rescue Plan, on a relative basis? Absolutely. But let’s remember that if you look at the $5 trillion that the federal government put into the economy during COVID, 80 cents on every dollar was spent under President Trump. Now, I voted for all that. So, I’m not critical. I am thinking, virtually all of this legislation, if I had to do it over again, I would do it because the potential of unraveling of the economy due to COVID, we just didn’t know where we were headed. And I don’t think the marginal couple hundred billion dollars of [spending] that came out of the American Rescue Plan, that has not been the sole driving force. And the other bills that we passed, the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS bill, the Inflation Reduction Act in terms of clean energy. Those dollars have not even hit the economy yet. So, I don’t think they are the primary causes of the current inflation.”
Westin then asked, “But the broader point I think I’m hearing you say is whoever was responsible for it, whether it was President Trump or President Biden or a combination of the two, there was too much fiscal stimulus in retrospect.”
Warner responded, “In retrospect, but when you were looking at an economy that was fully shut down, it’s ironic to me that some of my small business friends who are now saying, darn it, you guys spent too much were exactly the same people who were saying, you guys need to do another round of PPP, small business funding or you need to send out more additional checks to all Americans.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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