trillion. stephen dennis of bloomberg news on the bigger picture here he said there s sort of a big fight in washington that you may have heard about, it s about whether we spend 62 trillion dollars over a decade or 60 trillion dollars. joining me now is stephanie carleton professor of the deficit mid, professor carleton, good to see you again, thank you for being with us. i ve never generally speaking read numbers, i don t like talking about them on tv, this is the one problem we re talking about numbers, we put prices on bills, but we leave the discussion about the value within those bills till later. so the debate is about bringing the 3.5 trillion to two trillion. none of us know, most people don t know what the value was in that bill, what s being cut, and what s been installed because of it. that s exactly right we get really bogged down because these numbers feel so large, and they are large. and most of us can t wrap our heads around it, and of course
so joe manchin is worried about the cost. but there s another much higher cost that he should be much more worried about. or at least acknowledging in his calculation. stephanie kelton as a professor of economics at stony brook university. she s the author of the deficit mid. stephanie, good to see you again. joe manchin and others are missing a very big point. this is not spending for the sake of stimulating the economy. it s spending on things we should actually spend on. so when you built a highway system in america, the purpose of that was not stimulating the economy, it was to build a highway system. the things that this reconciliation bill is going to address, like eyeglasses and dental care for people who don t have it, like the cost of college tuition, it s not the same thing as stimulating the economy. i agree with you completely. i don t think we should be thinking about the proposed three and a half trillion dollar package as economic