Albert R. Hunt, Columnist

Why the U.S. Government Can't Be Downsized

Larry Summers on the four reasons it has to grow instead, no matter what Republicans promise.

September 7, 2017 at 12:00 PM UTC

Albert R. Hunt is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

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Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

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The Republican vow to significantly reduce the size of government is a foolish pipe dream, Larry Summers says, not because of liberal policy aspirations but because of structural economic realities.

At a lunch on Wednesday, Summers, a former Treasury secretary and a leading Democratic economic-policy thinker, explained the substantive as well as political impracticalities of cutting entitlements and defense spending in the years ahead.