Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign embraced a controversial outside analysis of his economic proposals Wednesday, defending the proposition that the Vermont senator’s economic platform would generate a massive, historic economic boom if he implemented it as president.
Speaking about the independent analysis prepared by University of Massachusetts economist Gerald Friedman, Sanders’ policy director, Warren Gunnels, said on a call with reporters Wednesday that “some of the conclusions that he reached I certainly do not think are unachievable.”
“I do not think it is unrealistic that we could have an unemployment rate in this country that is 3.8 percent,” Gunnels added, mentioning a specific projection in Friedman’s plan.
Among the other projections that Friedman made for Sanders’ ambitious progressive agenda were 5.3 percent annual economic growth, soaring incomes and collapsing poverty.
The study provoked controversy among liberal economists, with former Democratic White House economic advisers warning that it was unrealistic and damaged the credibility of Democrats.
Friedman’s analysis was not commissioned by the Sanders campaign. But a number of experts associated with the campaign agreed with its conclusions Wednesday, likely stoking the controversy within Democratic policy circles.
Friedman’s estimates are “well within the bounds of what is reasonable,” said Robert Reich, the Berkeley professor and former Labor secretary under Bill Clinton.
And William Black, a professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, fired back at the four former Democratic presidential advisers who wrote the letter criticizing Friedman’s results.
“They’re the folks who aren’t being empirical here. And as they ultimately admitted, they never re-ran the numbers. They didn’t find any errors in the plan,” Black said. “They just decided to have a public lynching of Friedman.”
James Galbraith, a University of Texas economics professor, decried the “unjustified and unwarranted attack” on Friedman’s analysis from other economists. The analysis, he said, was mainstream and included no unjustifiable assumptions. He attributed the massive growth projections to the boldness of Sanders’ plan being fed through a normal economic model.
Stephanie Kelton, Sanders’ former economist on the Senate Budget Committee, said that she welcomed Friedman’s report because it has led other economists to examine Sanders’ agenda. She said she was confident that other analyses performed by other experts would reach similar conclusions.
“I’m excited to see the discipline begin to ask questions like how much better could we be doing if we were doing more ambitious economic policy,” Kelton said.
