“We saw the jobs report. Only 6,000 jobs in the private sector will be created. And at that rate, it will be 10 years before we reach full employment. That is no exaggeration,” said Biden on Friday morning in the Oval Office during a meeting with the Democratic leadership in the House.
“I appreciate everyone’s presence because – the urgency with which they are moving – it is about people’s lives. It is not just about numbers,” said Biden. He added that many Americans are “really suffering” and Congress has the opportunity to “do something important here”.
Citing lessons learned in his time working on the Recovery Act during the Obama administration, Biden reiterated: “We cannot do much here, but we can do very little.”
Summers warned of issues in the plan that could impact financial stability and the value of the dollar, saying that the implementation of the stimulus could lead to unprecedented inflationary pressure and noting that the proposed stimulus is three times the projected deficit.
Biden added: “It’s not just the macroeconomic impact on our economy and our ability to compete internationally. It’s people’s lives. Real people are suffering and we can fix it.”
The jobs report released on Friday morning indicated that 49,000 jobs were added in January, but the country is still down nearly 10 million jobs since before the coronavirus pandemic. It also showed that the unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, exceeding economists’ expectations, marking the first drop in two months.
Minutes before Biden spoke to reporters on Friday, Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, also criticized Summers’ assessment.
“I think he is deeply wrong about that statement in the following sense and there is a way in which Larry is offering a warning that we have already heeded … this crisis, to finally put this virus behind us and to finally and reliably launch a robust, inclusive and racially just recovery, “Bernstein told CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “We have consistently stated that the risks of going to the small are much greater than the risks of too much. Now, that does not mean that there are no risks involved in the type of work we are doing, because it is always the case in the economy.”
“But what Larry is concerned about here is the overheating of inflation,” added Bernstein. “And now, we have inflation that has been below the Fed’s 2% target for over a decade.”
Bernstein also said that Summers’ assertion that the Biden government “was neglecting any potential inflationary pressure” was “totally wrong”.
CNN’s Betsy Klein and Anneken Tappe contributed to this report.