Biden transition team head Ted Kaufman floats a suggestion that austerity economics has to be Biden's 2021 policy

Dean Baker has some comments on this Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economic nonsense from former Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman - the head of Biden's current transition team who would have a major influence on personnel selections for a Biden-Harris Administration (The Burden of the Debt: Lessons for Biden Adviser Ted Kaufman CEPR 08/20/2020)

Top Biden adviser, and long-time personal friend, Ted Kaufman was seen in the Wall Street Journal warning that the debt run up by the Trump administration will seriously limit what Biden will be able to do as president. This is wrong big time, and it is the sort of silly thing that no one in a Biden administration should ever be saying.

The government’s ability to spend is limited by the economy’s ability to produce, not the debt. If the government spends too much, it will lead to inflation. When we have a period of high unemployment, as is the case now and almost certainly will still be the case if Biden takes office in January, we are very far from hitting the economy’s inflation barriers.

It takes some very deliberate head in the ground economics to argue that we are somehow limited by the size of the government debt. [my emphasis]

Biden has a distinct fundraising campaign for the transition team (Shane Goldmacher, Biden Team Begins Raising Money for Transition Committee New York Times 06/30/2020):

At least four officials have been soliciting money for the transition committee, according to people familiar with the matter: Jeff Zients, a former director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama; Mark Angelson, a businessman and former vice chairman of the Biden Foundation; Alex Katz, a former aide to Senator Chuck Schumer who now works at the investment firm Blackstone; and Evan Ryan, a former aide to Mr. Biden.