In his final address as Barack Obama’s top economic advisor, Lawrence H. Summers stuck to his guns by calling for more government spending.  According to Summers, the only way to bolster the economy and decrease unemployment is to spend more money.

In his remarks, he avoided using the word “stimulus” but said that less consumer spending would hobble the economy for years. He said the decrease, however, could be offset in part by the public sector.

“A substantial, sustained effort to rebuild America should be at the top of Washington’s priority list next year,” Summers said in a speech at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington.

Perhaps he forgot that the $800 billion stimulus package produced higher unemployment to the tune of 9.6%. He responded to questioning on the Administration’s economic policy by refusing to admit any wrongdoing:

Asked several times by reporters whether he would have done anything differently, Summers did not concede any mistakes.

“Would I like the results to be even better than they have been on a number of different dimensions? Of course,” he said. “But I think the president is right to take pride in what has been averted.”

What exactly did the President avert, you might ask?  Well, your guess is as good as mine.  The Left might say the end of the world.  But we see it more as bringing us closer to the brink.  We’d probably be right.

Given the ridiculous nature of these comments, we should be happy to have heard the last of this goon.  Peter Orzag and Christina Romer round out the list of the newly unemployed coming from the White House economic team.

To top it off, Summers claims that Obama is working to decrease the deficit:

He recalled his glory days during the Clinton years – “The United States improved its structural deficit by nearly four percentage points of GDP between 1993 and 2000” – and maintained that Obama “has already taken several important steps” to lessen the deficit. “I am not one who sees financial collapse on the imminent horizon,” Summers said.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post puts it best:

Americans don’t know how good they’ve got it – because they aren’t as smart as Larry Summers.