Talmon Joseph Smith of the New York Times asks Jared Bernstein, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, whether he regrets the size of the stimulus bill President Biden signed in early 2021. His answer begins: “Twenty-twenty hindsight is an analytical luxury — certainly one we didn’t have in January of 2021. Back then, we had millions of unemployed people. We had Covid deaths peaking. The economy was improving, but it was far from reopened.”

Plenty of people raised contemporaneous concerns about the size of the stimulus bill. Lawrence Summers, Michael Strain, and Olivier Blanchard all suggested prior to the bill’s enactment that it was dangerously large. So did the editors of the Wall Street Journal. The editors of National Review thought the expanding economy of early 2021 undid the argument for the bill. Jason Furman suggested that it be modified so that it would shrink if the economy grew fast.

All of them looked at the economic data then available and reached a conclusion different from the Biden administration’s. Its policy-makers cannot say they weren’t warned.