Outgoing White House economic adviser Larry Summers warned Wednesday that failure to pass a new tax cut compromise would significantly raise the risk of a double-dip recession.
"To pass this bill in the next couple of weeks would materially increase the risk that the economy would stall out and we would have a double dip," he told reporters at the White House.
Summers added that he thinks Congress will pass the deal President Obama struck with Republicans, an agreement that has come under withering criticism from liberal Democrats over the two-year extension of tax cuts for the rich as well as the middle class.
Summers said that he doesn't think that Congress would take a step that "materially increases the risk that this economy will stall out."
Positive reviews coming in from economists, Summers said, show the deal is the right thing to do.
