Does Krugman mean "duplicity" in some other language?

In the NY Times today, columnist Paul Krugman makes his cas why president Obama should not compromise on the issue of extending the current tax rates for all Americans. In truth, however, all that the column does is to expose Krugman for the hypocrite that he clearly is.

First, Krugman recounts the history of the passage of the Bush tax cuts. According to Krugman, "back in 2001, former President George W. Bush pulled a fast one. He wanted to enact an irresponsible tax cut, largely for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans. But there were Senate rules in place designed to prevent that kind of irresponsibility. So Mr. Bush evaded the rules by making the tax cut temporary, with the whole thing scheduled to expire on the last day of 2010."

This is wrong in so many different ways. Krugman says that the tax cuts were largely for the benefit of the wealthy, the standard progressive talking point on these tax rates. We now know that over the next decade, keeping the tax rates for the wealthy will cost about $700 billion while keeping the tax rates for those who are not wealthy will cost about 3.5 tillion dollars. So the wealthy -- who pay about 40% of all US income taxes -- got breaks worth only on fifth of what those who were not wealthy received. In short, to the left, any tax bill that cut rates for any of the wealthy was a tax break for the rich. The truth is that the tax cuts were really for all those who pay taxes with the largest share going to those who pay the least.

Another instance of hypocracy from Krugman is his claim that Bush used a gimmick of making the cuts temporary in order to pass them. What Krugman does not say is that the so-called gimmick used was reconciliation. This senate practice allowed passge of the tax bill without any chance for a filibuster by the Democrats. Indeed, reconciliation was designed by the Senate (under Democrat control at the time) to make sure that filibusters could not block tax bills or spending bills needed to reconcile the spending level to the budget. This same procedure was used by the Democrats last spring to pass Obamacare. Of course, regulation of health insurance is not normally thought of as a tax or spending bill, but the Democrats used reconciliation nevertheless. At the time, Krugman was one of the cheerleaders for using reconciliation to get Obamacare through after the election of Scott Brown as senator from Massachusetts. Bush's gimmick (which used the process for its intended purpose) became Obama's righteous act (which misused the process completely). So much for honesty by Krugman.

But that is not the biggest item of hypocracy by Krugman. This winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics now says that America cannot afford the tax cut since the deficit is so large. For the last month, Krugman has been puching for further spending which will make that deficit much larger -- indeed, way bigger than the extension of these tax cuts. So the deficit is bad if we are speaking of keeping tax rates the same for the wealthy, but the dificit is irrelevant if we are speaking of more government spending. Translated into English, this means that Krugman speaks out of both sides of his mouth.

There is even more nonsense in the Krugman piece, but I am sure that you get the picture. My only question is this: what was the Nobel selection committee thinking when they chose this fool? Of course, president obama also won the Nobel peace prize for things he has yet to do, so I guess I should not be surprised.