Cannons to the Right of Them Cannons to the Left of Them

This piece from NJ.com conveys a somewhat different perspective on President Biden’s infrastructure spending bill:

President Biden nearly scuttled the bipartisan infrastructure deal last week by inserting his foot in his mouth, but he recovered over the weekend and put the compromise back on track.

Now, progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are doing their best to kill it again, and it looks like their problem has deeper roots. If they don’t change their minds, the compromise deal will be back on life support soon.

That’s crazy. The compromise gives Biden roughly one-quarter of the new spending that he originally sought in his grab-bag infrastructure plan, so this glass is not even half-full, granted. But the compromise includes nearly $600 billion in new spending, making it the largest infrastructure plan in decades. (It’s been falsely advertised as double that amount by counting money that’s already agreed to or in the pipeline.)

The money is sorely needed, and would be spent over eight years, focused on traditional infrastructure programs like roads, bridges, broadband access, water and sewer pipes, and electric vehicles.

Now let’s stop right there. The bipartisan plan is focused on infrastructure; Sen. Sanders and his supporters insist on massively subsidized consumer spending. As Warner Wolf used to say, let’s go to the videotape. Here is what has happened to consumer spending recently:

There is not a shred of evidence that more consumer spending, powered by government debt, will bolster economic growth. Neither Keynesian economic nor Modern Monetary Theory would make that claim. If you think otherwise, I suggest a remedial economics course.

Let me provide an alternative explanation. While the lockdowns persisted consumer spending drooped. That was to be expected. People couldn’t shop and were afraid of what would come next. Rather than spending people saved as this graph avers:

Now that lockdowns have ended in most places consumer spending and savings are returning to their previous trajectories.

What will the impact of all of the debt-fueled spending be? And why do they insist on it? It isn’t to foster economic growth. It isn’t to help the poor since much of the money will go to the middle class and upper middle class.