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“When the economic team finally walked through the contents of the memo with the president-elect on December 16, Romer mentioned her preference for over a trillion dollars. Summers allowed that bigger would be better. But these points were made in passing. “I don’t remember that as part of the discussion,” conceded one member of the economic team in attendance. The final version of the memo had framed the debate around two basic choices—roughly $600 billion and roughly $850 billion—and these were the focus of the conversation. “The option of going well above $800 billion was certainly raised, but it was not discussed extensively,” Romer later recalled in an interview. “We felt the most important thing was to make sure the president-elect was on board with a plan as large as $800 billion.”

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/100961/memo-Larry-Summers-Obama