President Biden said on Monday that he had spoken with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and that he still did not think a recession was inevitable.
“No, I don’t think it is,” Biden said when asked if a recession is more likely than ever. “I was talking to Larry Summers this morning and there’s nothing inevitable about a recession.”
The president, while talking to reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Del., pointed to efforts to cut health care costs for Americans and tax reform as steps to combat inflation.
He has called on Congress to pass tax reform to make the wealthiest Americans and big corporations pay what he argues is their fair share as a way to reduce inflationary pressures.
“I think we’re gonna be able to get a change in Medicare and a reduction in the cost of insulin,” Biden said. “We also can move in a direction that we can provide for tax increases … on those in the corporate area as well as individuals as it relates to [former President] Trump’s tax cuts.”
Biden is essentially pushing back at remarks Summers made the previous day.
Summers said Sunday that his “best guess” is there will be a recession in the U.S.
“I base that on the fact that we haven’t had a situation like the present with inflation above 4 percent and unemployment beyond 4 percent without a recession following within a year or two,” Summers told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.”
Biden on Thursday said that a recession was not inevitable in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates at the quickest pace in nearly 30 years. He also, in an interview with The Associated Press, pointed to the nation’s low unemployment rate as a reason for optimism.