Krugman Will Not Acknowledge Obstructionism – Blames Obama

Re: Op-Ed Columnist – The Phantom Menace – NYTimes.com , By PAUL KRUGMAN, Published: November 22, 2009

Paul Krugman

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more…

…Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

Krugman kills me. He will stop at nothing to ignore history and stretch as hard as he can to point a finger at Obama, and his reasoning behind this weeks slam on Obama is a long stretch. With good lefties like Krugman, who needs the Republicans.

The truth here is that there was tremendous opposition to even a small stimulus. Republican governors in southern states like Texas and South Carolina even fanned the flames of succession over the stimulus bill. Republican leaders in Congress bashed Obama relentlessly, filibustered, and used the right-wing echo machine to do anything they could do to stop the stimulus from passing. The Republicans did everything they could do to undermine a stimulus package that was as big as Obama could politically make it with over a third of the total package in tax cuts to appease them.

He says that the impediment to recovery is a lack of government effort. I say he is full of s**t. I say that the main impediment to recovery is what it has always been – right-wing obstructionism. The party of “no”. How can there be more government effort when the right uses procedural gimmicks, the media, and Republican governors to stop any good government action?

And besides that, Krugman never mentions how all this got started in the first place with the right-wing deregulation, never looking beyond his nose to point a finger where it should go – straight at George W. Bush. He doesn’t even mention what the Republican stimulus plan revolved around. No spending, just more tax cuts for the rich!

Now Krugman says that Obama didn’t do enough. Here’s what I say to Krugman, F.U.!

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