Top Moody’s economist: Infrastructure and budget deals will help economy

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday will release a report by Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi to push back on GOP attacks, arguing that the bipartisan infrastructure deal and Democrat-only social-spending package would help the economy.

Zandi writes, in excerpts provided to Axios: "Greater investments in public infrastruc­ture and social programs will lift productivity and labor force growth, and the attention on climate change will help forestall its increas­ingly corrosive economic effects."

• Zandi says the policies "would direct the benefits of the stronger growth to lower-in­come Americans and address the long-run­ning skewing of the income and wealth distribution."
• Failing to pass the legislation, Zandi says, "would certainly diminish the economy’s prospects."

Zandi contends that inflation concerns are "overdone," since "much of the additional fiscal support ... is designed to lift the economy’s longer-term growth potential and ease inflation pres­sures."

• "The legislation, he says, would "strengthen long-term economic growth, the benefits of which would mostly accrue to lower- and middle-income Americans."