Krugman admits the truth

In a column today bemoaning the cancellation of the second tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York, Paul Krugman makes a major admission about the stimulus package. Here is what he says: "When people ask why the Obama stimulus didn’t accomplish more, one good response is to ask, what stimulus? Leaving aside the cost of financial rescues and safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, federal spending has risen only modestly — and this rise has been largely offset by cutbacks at the state and local level." So here is Mr. Stimulus himself, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Spending who now admits that there really was no stimulus from the $800 billion of spending and debt that Obama and the Democrats pushed through.

To me, this is the beginning of the Krugman excuse marathon. Krugman, of course, was strongly in favor of the Obama stimulus for its Keynesian effect on the economy. Only that stimulus could provide the needed demand to get the economy out of the doldrums -- or so he told us. But Krugman now admits it did not work. That needs to be repeated: KRUGMAN NOW ADMITS THAT THE STIMULUS DID NOT WORK!!!!! So why not? Krugman tells us that not enough was spent. Instead of 800 billion dollars, maybe the USA should have spent 800 trillion dollars.

The simple truth is that Krugman is correct in one thing that he says: very little of the stimulus was actually spent on expenditures that would stimuluate growth in the economy. Most went as payoffs to favored constituencies of the Democrats like unions and academics. Even the supposed "shovel ready projects" were really more ready for shovels to move the BS than actual construcion work. The Democrats must sholder the full responsibility for wasting nearly a trillion dollars on a purported stimulus effort that did not have any chance of success.