Claudia Sahm over at INET:
The $1.9 trillion relief package is on track to pass in March but not without a struggle and with some important details still uncertain. The price tag is big, coming on the heels of the nearly $4 trillion Congress appropriated last year. That’s six times the fiscal relief in the first two years of the Great Recession. Even without the new package, the U.S. federal debt is more than GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a level not seen since World War II.
With the stakes so high, disagreement among economists, even those who normally agree with each other, is heated. The question is whether spending at this level is necessary for full recovery or will instead overheat the economy. It appears that the inflation hawks have lost this skirmish, but the war is only getting started.
In the ranks of the inflation hawks are many revered macroeconomists. Most vocal are Larry Summers, a former Secretary of the Treasury, and Olivier Blanchard, a former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. John Taylor, Greg Mankiw, and Bill Dudley have raised similar concerns. On the other side are Janet Yellen, current Secretary of the Treasury, Jay Powell, current Chair of the Federal Reserve, Paul Krugman, a past Nobel Prize winner, and Gita Gopinath, the current Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, among others.
More here.