With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. LARRY SUMMERS isn’t in the Biden administration, but he is in their heads. Some in the White House dismiss him as old news. Others continue to consult him. At least a few worry that his critiques could be right. Whatever one thinks of him, BILL CLINTON ’s Treasury secretary and BARACK OBAMA’s first National Economic Council director has become an unlikely avatar of the loyal opposition to the Biden White House. He has said JOE BIDEN’s signature $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan was too large and could lead to inflation, and went so far as to tell Bloomberg News in March, “I think this is the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years”—a quote Republicans gleefully repeated. He reiterated his warning of the dangers of inflation this week in a Washington Post op-ed, writing that “the focus of our macroeconomic policy needs to change.” The dominant view inside the West Wing is that Summers concerns are misplaced and that he should sit this one out. Longtime Summers critics believe he’s been sounding off because he’s not in the administration. A White House official said the administration still believes that the risk of doing too little remains much greater than the risk of inflation. And Federal Reserve Chair JEROME POWELL says that higher inflation should only be temporary while the economy works out the kinks of emerging from the pandemic, although the central bank is watching incoming data closely. Still, some administration officials have quietly wondered if Summers was right about the rescue package being too big. While many outside economists back Biden’s approach, others also say Summers represents a silent minority of center-left economists who would speak out more if not for fear of crossing the White House. “A lot of what he's saying is what everyone is saying over coffee and whispering,” said one prominent economist who proved the point by only saying so anonymously. “He’s an outlier in the public debate because the people that have megaphones aren't saying this on the Democratic side, but he's well within a consensus view in the economics profession.” KEN ROGOFF , Summers’ colleague at Harvard who has also been criticized by the ascendant left-wing of the party, told West Wing Playbook that “it's very courageous of him to make [his arguments] in this world where there's this, basically, cancel culture, and there are plenty of people who probably want to do that to Larry.” Rogoff said that he largely agreed with the Biden team’s agenda but also believes that Biden’s first legislative package was too big. “It clearly was ill-timed, was too big,” he said before noting the optics may ultimately work to Biden’s benefit. “Politically, it may have been very smart.” Summers may not find his role as the object of progressive ire all too uncomfortable, considering how often he has played it before. But the fact that he’s enduring it while outside the circles of power and not within them is a sign of how far economic policy-making has shifted since the Obama administration. In 2008, Obama was well aware of Summers’ divisive reputation—from his pursuit of deregulation to his theories about why women weren’t better represented in the field of science—but concluded, "I needed him, his country needed him,” as he wrote in his recent memoir. Obama wrote that he even promised (at the suggestion of RAHM EMANUEL) to nominate Summers as the next chair of the Federal Reserve if he first took the NEC chair position, a promise he later reneged on in the face of opposition from the left, particularly Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.). Now, the Biden administration is more likely to approvingly blast out an email with the latest PAUL KRUGMAN column than the latest Summers one (Krugman, notably, did not outright dismiss inflation fears in his column today). While senior Biden officials like BRIAN DEESE and GENE SPERLING are colleagues and friends with Summers, the administration is also chock-full of Summers critics—economists who believe that decades of Democratic economic policy that failed to address wage stagnation, outsourcing and rising inequality led to the rise of DONALD TRUMP. But Summers has some prominent names in his corner too. The inflation fears he has articulated—which have been seized on by Republicans—were also echoed by WARREN BUFFETT recently said in remarks that caught Wall Street’s attention. . “We are seeing very substantial inflation,” Buffett said. The White House has taken notice too. Biden tried to counter such concerns in a speech Wednesday in Cleveland by pointing to rising wages and making the case that their economic goals were loftier than micro-managing inflation. “We want to get something economists call ‘full employment,’” he said, referring to an economic state where enough people have jobs that employers start to raise wages to attract workers. The White House said the speech was not a response to any one person or criticism but rather a new articulation of the values Biden has always run on. Still, the remarks were an implicit departure from recent Democratic administrations that had folks like Summers. BHARAT RAMAMURTI, a deputy NEC director who came from Warren’s team, tweeted afterwards: “I can’t remember the last President who so clearly and unequivocally embraced full employment as their economic goal.” PSA — We’re going to be experimenting with some new items and sections. Tell us what you like and what you hate. 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