Welcome to Beg to Bueg to Differ, the Bullworks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bulwark, and I'm joined

by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal, Linda

Chavez of the Niskanid Center Center and Damon Linker of the week.

We are delighted to welcome as our special guest this week, Maya McGinnis, president of the

committee for a responsible federal budget and we want to talk about being

responsible with our budgeting because right now we are on the verge of the Congress on the verge of considering a

1.9 trillion dollar stimulus bill so first things Maya, I want to start with you because

does the very term stimulus seem misplaced? I mean one of the points that critics

have made is that we don't need to stimulate the economy.

The economy will bounce back as soon as the COVID crisis is over.

People aren't even spending money from the last stimulus many you

know wealthier people aren't because they need to wait for the virus to be

conquered before they can resume economic activity.

Yeah, first, great to be with all of you.

I really love listening to the show and it's always nice to join you all.

Absolutely, this isn't stimulus because in the traditional sense

because this is in no way an economic downturn in the traditional sense.

Basically we had to shut down the economy in order to fight the pandemic and I think really the way to think about all of this is it's a bridge loan to get to the other side well not a loan a grant but it's a bridge to get to the other side of back when we can open up the economy.

And luckily all sides are that. When we do that, the recovery in most sectors is going to be quite strong.

There's actually going to be a lot of pent up demand.

And so I think it's getting from here to there,

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