Bhatti and Alston observe that under the 2020 CARES Act, the Fed was given permission to make up to $500 billion in indefinite, long-term loans to municipal borrowers, but it failed to act on that authority to the extent allowed.

It should be noted that this failure was largely attributable to the anti-federal ideology that dominates most state governments and is willing to harm their citizens to preserve that ideology. Deep red states view any benefit of the federal government and central bank as a threat to their power. They have hitched their wagons to RayGun's false "taxpayer money" the Austrian school gold standard view of federal finance because it is easily adopted by econ illiterate voters and supports their "small gubmint" schtick.

But men like Eccles are in short supply — if they exist at all — in the halls of U.S. government power today.

Another co-architect of FDR's policies that lifted us out of the great depression and made it possible to be a force for good in WWII was Beardsley Ruml. He was the President of the New York Fed and later wrote a white paper titled "Taxation for revenue is obsolete" in '45. He understood that, once the gold standard was rescinded domestically, the federal government was only constrained by available resources and labor in what it could afford.

There are a few advocates for MMT's economic framework scattered around our government. However, their appetite for abuse and their resistance to corporate funding is not unlimited. Even Senator Sanders, whose econ advisor is Dr. Stephanie Kelton (one of the better-known and more prolific MMT economists) rejects outward acknowledgment of the theory and couches his policy advocacy in "payfor" terms and the need to tax the wealthy and corporations to fund it.