Paul Krugman: "Aren't you glad that Obama watered down the stimulus bill?"

Paul Krugman
New York Times
January 28, 2009
January 28, 2009, 6:59 pm

The House has passed the stimulus bill with not a single Republican vote.

Aren’t you glad that Obama watered it down and added ineffective tax cuts, so as to win bipartisan support?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/zero-lower-bound/

I have the highest respect for Paul Krugman, as well as other such critics. We NEED them! But I've also grown to admire Obama's ability to "think 3 moves ahead"! He has (and in good faith!) reached his hand across the aisle, as he had promised to do. But those miserable corksuckers SPAT in that outstretched palm! THEY, and not HE, will be judged by the American public accordingly. He might then be in a better position to put some teeth in that bill when it's finished.

pnorman

He's an idiot when it comes to the reality of governing for all Americans, not just for a PUMAish professor at Princeton.

good ideas but when he gratuitiously bashed Obama in the primaries..I lost interest in what he had to say.

Krugman went out of his way to slice and dice Obama and I'm not sure facts were that important to him.

Obama is the President and he will do it his way..not the way of the mean spirited Krugman.

There's alot I could say about him but I won't right now. Basically, you're right about Krugman's MO and his mean-spirited PUMA
character. Team O feels the same way we do about him. Barack is flicking dirt off his shoulders right about now.

;)

image of Obama flicking the dirt specks off his jacket. It's priceless and actually works!

Spelling.

Notice how Krugman keeps complaining but has never offered no concrete plan of his own? President Obama even
pointed it out during a news conference, saying he'd welcome Krugman's plan if he had one.

Heh. :hi:

Read the headline and I was ready to pounce...

the second half of Obama's first term. The Republicans are doing a great job of giving us ammo to use against them next year.

FDR: Me too! I wish it had been bolder. Seize the opportunity, man!
ER: And how! What a grand opportunity this is!

I so wish they'd put Keynes into full dramatic WW 2 scale action.

A full FDR scale package, and if more than three Repubs cross, we win the psychological battle too.

This is the like a second confederacy.

The House did a good job. Some of the stuff they took out didn't need to be in there anyway

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Actually, I think it might be worth it in the end - the Rethugs are like Rottweilers (well, mentally-impaired Rottweilers). In any case, in order to come around they need love, AND they need to know who's boss. And it takes a while.

While I'm skeptical about what Obama's trying to do, I applaud it, support it, and hope like hell that it works, because if it doesn't work the world will soon be a far nastier place than it is now.

Sorry, ain't going to happen. Obama isn't that guy and we've known this for months.

It couldn't possibly be that he wants a better bill that would help the economy more.

Going into this, it was said, we would do this with or without them. Now it goes to the senate.

by behaving like a partisan asshole who never made any substantial effort to gain Democratic votes. The Repugs are so ideological and obstructionist that they aren't going to support legislation with Democratic origins, regardless of whether our party makes a substantial effort or makes no effort to win their support, simply because it is legislation with Democratic origins.

who can take on Wall Street and corporate crooks and their political whores. That's what most Americans want to see.

only idiots would call it "Obama bashing"

Bush sought bipartisan support, and he got it from spineless Democrats who helped him get us in to Iraq and pass the Patriot act, immunity for Telecoms, etc.

And Bush was successfully framing the issue as protecting America or being with the terrorists, and the "spineless" were afraid of not getting re-elected.

Obama has to make it seem like he is including them. Thats what he ran on. And as long as he does that, he provides political cover for the Dems in the mid terms.

'cause that's precisely what people were saying then....

Worked out nicely, eh?

and not end up with a replay of 1994.

I know that's not what you want to hear, but letting the losers save face gets us some agreement later on. And the future tougher with health care and entitlements.

The Senate gets to put more into infrastructure, etc, and we'll get some GOP to vote on it later-or not, but Obama wins in the political theater of leading. The public wants bi-partisan.

Krugman has always had a tin political ear, yelling health care mandates no expert wants, while dissing Obama.

re: "the public wants bi-partisanship"

What evidence do you have that the public REALLY wants this?
Eveything I have read, the public wants solutions.

If the GOP is going to obstruct, you can't have bi-partisanship.

Krugman is right on this issue.
Give the country the correct stimulus plan, not the one that will make some of your politcial opponents happy.

I thought elections had consequences? Steamroll over the people that have screwed us for the last 8 years, don't try to compromise with them.

When did the Democratic leadership in the House or Senate challenged Bush's policies or appointments? I can only think of one time and that was over four years ago. Social Security privitization.

What Bush legislation bills or appointments were filibusterd by Democrats in the Senate?

Answer.

None.

That was bi-partisanship in the extreme.

and he's only been RIGHT ON EVERY FUCKING THING so far...

let's see - believe all the self-appointed "experts" or the REAL experts with a PROVEN track record...

hard to choose...

Beltway key party games. The public wants stability, solutions, and bold leadership. The public wants our votes to mean what they are supposed to mean. The public would like to see justice that is non partisan, and jails every complicit politician on both sides. The public is in peril, and cares not for the indulgent school yard games you promote, and that the Beltway thinks is the Law of Nature.

the giveaways weren't major and we'll get the family planning back in a separate bill. The tax relief in the stimulus looks very different from Bush's tax cuts. The bill passed and Obama has the high road. He said he would offer bipartisanship, he did. They get to look like the Hooverites. Serves them right.

Clenched fist and all that jazz.

Beats working for a living, I guess.

Obama, not even 2-3 weeks ago, proclaimed emphatically to the national media that if Krugman had ideas, "then we're going to do it."

Silly Mr. Krugman. He believed him.

that's their problem.

Krugman attacked the shit out of Obama and did a cursory fly-by over McCain during the election. One can only conclude if McCain had won, Krugman would have stepped back from his politically-charged missives and stuck to economics where he belongs.

taken it.

who also largely agreed with Krugman in the run-up. (MoJo).


Silly men.


http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2009/01/11673_liberal_economists_skeptical_obama_stimulus_package.html

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/51386/
(Q&A with Krugman)

Would you be Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary if he asked?

Krugman:I would urge him very much to reconsider. I’m just temperamentally unsuited.



So you would blink.

Krugman: Yes. I don’t want the job. I don’t want any kind of administration job. I think that it’s better for me, the country, and general mental health to have me on the outside.

did Obama ask Krugman to serve the nation in any capacity?

If asked, Krugman might have said yes .... doing his patriotic duty of course.

If he had been asked and declined, Krugman would have lost much credibility and any criticisms he might have would not have much impact.

He indicated that he wasn't interested....I think he's too much of a rogue anyway, I like him where he is. He had stated other places as well that he was not interested in serving in the administration, I'm surprised it's the first place you have heard it.

as are those who still somehow think that it's in our interest to pander to Republicans- and further failed policies at everyones' expense.

Heck of a job, don't you think?

Boy howdy!

making us look weak, and more importantly damaging the stimulus' chances for success when implemented. In return they gave nothing.

The Repukes are not in the stronger position, to put it mildly. But they intend to make the most of their strength and draw clear distinctions.

You have to expect this because, really, THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE.

They are down hard as a party, having (deservedly) taken the rap for everything that's gone wrong for the last 8 years. Moreover, they have been telling the American electorate for a full generation that ONLY THEY can be trusted on the economy. The Democrats they said were closet communists - unAmerican, antibusiness, hostile to anyone trying to better their station in life. The Repuke line on Democrats is one of total disqualification. They don't say we pursue the same goal that they do, only with mistaken approaches. They say what we do is wrong, wrong as in evil, and we do it for reasons that are equally wrong and evil. What the hell do you expect them to say and do now, now that Democrats have been tapped by the people to lead us out of an economic collapse? They can't say Yes, the Democrats' economic stimulus ideas have merit and the Democrats have a lot of worthwhile ideas, we can work alongside them. That would give the lie to everything the Repukes have told America about their own economic "philosophy" and about the Democrats' "evil intentions" for upwards of thirty years. They may as well close up shop and sell the filing cabinets in that case. Their justification as a party would disappear and so would they.

They seek survival in the hope that the economic collapse gets much worse, leading people to blame Democrats in 12 months or 24 months for the absence of significant recovery. If there's a recovery the Democrats will look good for at least one generation. If there isn't one, the Repukes will say We told you those Commie Democrats would just wreck things! We wouldn't compromise our principles to help them wreck America just to "get along".

By forcing us to compromise with them, they increase their chances that there will not be a significant recovery. By refusing to vote for the resulting bill, they can proudly claim not to have compromised with the "Democrat Party" in its goals to takeover the country with "Godless Soshulizzum!"

Either way... not so Nobel of him.

They didn't post mine.

Senate and, hopefully, the House-added tax cuts will be removed. But Obama can still claim he reached out to the repulsive Boner-types and all he got in return was a giant fuck you. He looks good, they look like assholes.