Some Questions for Joe Biden and the Administration

Joe Biden was on Meet The Press this weekend. He was asked about the rosey forecasts that administration put out regarding what the stimulus would do. For instance, the administration predicted that unemployment would reach 9% without the stimulus, and stay below 8% with the stimulus. In response to these predictions, here is what Joe Biden said.

No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse. But we took the mainstream model as to what we thought -- and everyone else thought -- the unemployment rate would be."

"Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed."

Now, let's break this down. The administration misjudged, according to the VP, the intensity of the recession. They thought things weren't nearly as bad as they were. First, when they used the term "catastrophe" over and over in selling the stimulus, just how rosey did they think the economy was?

More importantly though, if the administration underestimated the intensity of the recession then isn't the stimulus entirely not large enough? Isn't Biden really saying that the stimulus isn't nearly enough? If that's the case, isn't it time to table health care to figure out just how much stimulus is necessary?

Isn't the admission by Biden that the administration "guessed wrong" about the intensity of the recession also an admission that the stimulus isn't large enough. After all, the administration didn't merely pull the number $787 billion out of the sky, did they? If it wasn't just a random number, then isn't it wrong? Isn't it too small? How can we be moving onto health care when clearly, the stimulus isn't large enough? Or, am I missing something?