The truth comes out — Romer recommended 1.8 trillion stimulus

As Scheiber writes, members of the president's economic team felt that if they were to properly fill the hole caused by the recession, they would need a bill that priced at $1.8 trillion -- $600 billion more than was previously believed to be the high-water mark for the White House 

The $1.8 trillion figure was included in a December 2008 memo authored by Christina Romer (the incoming head of the Council of Economic Advisers) and obtained by Scheiber in the course of researching his book 

"When Romer showed [Larry] Summers her $1.8 trillion figure late in the week before the memo was due, he dismissed it as impractical. So Romer spent the next few days coming up with a reasonable compromise: roughly $1.2 trillion," Scheiber writes 

Read the whole sad story at The Huffington Post
'The Escape Artist': Christina Romer Advised Obama To Push $1.8 Trillion Stimulus
by Sam Stein

That figure would have generated a fiscal deficit that would have come close to offsetting the demand leakage to non-government surpluses due to increased saving desire. That would have drastically curtained the rise in unemployment and resulted in a speedier recovery. What a tragic waste!

Strongest argument yet against "being practical" instead of following principle. If Obama becomes a one term president it will be largely due to Summers' penchant for political pragmatism. Apparently, the president never saw Romer's memo.

As has now become the stuff of Obama administration lore, when the final document was ultimately laid out for the president, even the $1.2 trillion figure wasn't included. Summers thought it was still politically impractical. Moreover, if Obama had proposed $1.2 trillion but only obtained $800 billion, it would have been categorized as a failure. 

"He had a view that you don't ever want to be seen as losing," a Summers colleague told Scheiber.