Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic House leaders held an economic forum that featured ten experts -- including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, EPI's Jared Bernstein, former SEC Chair Arthur Levitt, and our own Bob Kuttner -- to plan an economic recovery package. By all accounts the experts tended to be remarkably unified in their opinions.
The good news is that Democrats seem intent on a package that gets the most "bang for its buck," an oft-repeated phrase, which means they'll look at indicators like these. They also seem intent on crafting their own bill, with Pelosi remarking that the last stimulus package, which relied heavily on a tax rebate, was a Republican bill passed with Democratic votes, and this time will be different. The bad news is that it's unclear when this bill will pass. Democrats plan a variety of hearings up through the election dealing with how to craft this bill and emphasizing public transparency, but it seems the result of the elections will determine if they pass a bill in a lame-duck session or in January. Pelosi said she and her leadership team were in contact with the Obama campaign on these issues, and it suggests that this afternoon's economic policy roll out by Obama (more on that later) wasn't entirely coincidental.
Also in attendance was Iowa Governor Chet Culver, the Democratic Governor's Association's federal liaison, who stressed the importance of federal assistance for state governments, an overwhelming majority of which are seeing fiscal shortfalls as a result of the economy's ills. Making sure that state governments continue to act to alleviate the recession -- as opposed to contributing to it by cutting needed programs, laying off workers, or raising taxes -- is critical.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank hung around afterward to talk to the press. He was pushing a book by Mark Zandi called "Financial Shock" that games out how the sub-prime mortgage crisis led to the financial crisis and is contributing to the recession. He said he was planning on pushing regulatory reform, specifically of financial derivatives and leverage, in January of next year. I had a chance to ask him what he thought of Neel Kashkari, the mildly controversial head of the bailout program, and he said he was "surprised by it. [Treasury Secretary] Paulson has a good understanding of the politics of the market. I don't think he has as a good understanding of the politics of democracy," saying that there were legitimate concerns about conflict-of-interest questions and noting tomorrow's hearing on the subject.
-- Tim Fernholz
Bonus Holiday Jokery: Pelosi, a proud Italian-American, recognized Columbus Day and remarked of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, "Steny is smiling because he's a Viking and he has a different view on the discovering of America."
