It’s not surprising US President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus emergency plan touched off concerns that a gusher of federal spending on the possible eve of a vaccine-fueled economic take-off might lead to inflation. What is surprising is who is doing the fretting: Not debt-hawk Republicans but former Treasury secretary, Democratic stalwart and Harvard University professor Lawrence Summers, who in a recent Washington Post essay said the Biden plan could “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation … Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown.” Summers’ critique, however, represents perhaps only the most prominent breach in what had seemed a broad consensus among economists that in responding to the pandemic – an unforeseen shock that brought a healthy economy to a standstill – it was near impossible to do too much. Turns out that thinking is SO last year. As the details of the Biden plan work through Congress, the one-size-fits-all, spend-it-fast approach that fueled approval of the initial relief measures nearly a year ago has shifted to a more detailed argument over whether spending less might deliver a better result. The debate has veered from economic wonkiness – what dataset best estimates household spending? how big is the “output gap” anyway? – to more recently resemble a family feud, replete with snarky tweets and, on Friday, a staged showdown between Summers and Nobel economics laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.