Obama can point to an impressive array of economists who agree that the economy needs a huge shot in the arm. About 200 of them, including a half-dozen Nobel laureates, joined a petition backing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 before it was passed by the House.
Endorsing a letter drafted by the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, the economists said the then $825 billion plan "proposes important investments that can start to overcome the nation's damaging loss of jobs" and would "put the United States back onto a sustainable long-term-growth path."
Still, this is economics, not something straightforward like astrophysics. The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, came back with its own petition for economists. Ninety of them, including three Nobel Prize winners, signed a letter challenging Obama's plan.
These economists said they "do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance." Instead, they said, "lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth."
Adam Smith published his seminal Wealth of Nations in 1776, and it's safe to say that economic debates have vexed American policymakers ever since. But perhaps not since the Great Depression has the nation faced so stark a choice about which set of economists to heed.
Gallup and the like do not poll economists, so data are hard to come by. Still, anecdotal evidence supports Obama's assertions that a large slice of economists agree on the need to take big, bold action to address the deepening recession.
