Paul Krugman

Krugman: Romney Would Govern Like Paul Ryan

Sahil Kapur | May 6, 2012, 12:42PM

Mitt Romney's diversity of policy positions over the last decade has left conservatives and liberals wondering: What would he actually do as president? Would he return to his former, more moderate self, or would he embrace the ideological fervor of the right as he did during the primary?

According New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, it's hardly a close call: A hypothetical President Romney would do pretty much what House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan tells him to do, because he won't have much of a choice politically. And that, he argues, would be a disaster for the economy.

"Romney -- well, who knows what Romney thinks. Romney's economic advisers are not crazy," Krugman told TPM in an interview. "But I think it's unlikely Romney would have the leeway [to break from the Ryan mold]." The presumptive Republican nominee for president has effusively praised Ryan and, during the primary, attacked Newt Gingrich for criticizing him.

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Paul Krugman

Krugman Unloads On Paul Ryan

Sahil Kapur | May 3, 2012, 6:20AM

Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman fired back at Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) after the influential Republican laughed off the New York Times columnist's criticisms by saying, "I've always figured I've got three certainties in my life: Death, taxes and attacks from Paul Krugman."

In an exclusive interview following the release of his new book End This Depression Now!, Krugman told TPM, "That's not a substantive remark. I've never attacked him just for nothing in particular. I've gone after his arithmetic and said it doesn't add up at all. And he has never offered a response to that. All he does is make scary noises about the deficit, with mood music, with organ music in the background about how ominous it is, and then propose a plan that would in fact increase the deficit."

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Barack Obama

Krugman: Obama May Lose Re-Election

Sahil Kapur | May 2, 2012, 5:43AM

There may not be much President Obama can do to improve the economy between now and the election, but telling a clear story about why it remains weak could mean the difference between victory and defeat this November. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman fears the Obama team is getting that critical narrative wrong.

"They've tied themselves up in knots because they've bought into this notion that it would sound wrong to admit that they haven't been able to do everything that they really should have done," Krugman told TPM in an interview following the release of his new book, "End This Depression Now!" "It's incredible -- they can't quite make up their minds on whether the theme is that Republicans are standing in the way of doing what has to be done, or things are really good and America's back on track. The problem is that you can't perceive both of those lines at the same time."

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Barney Frank

Barney Frank Unloads On The 'Great Scam' Of Paul Ryan

Sahil Kapur | April 12, 2012, 6:08AM

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) unleashed a stinging attack on House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan in an interview with TPM, describing him as an ideologically driven extremist who doesn't deserve his reputation within the political establishment as a genuine fiscal hawk.

Labeling the House-passed GOP budget a "great scam," Frank cited its military spending hikes from current law levels as evidence that Ryan's primary goal isn't deficit reduction. He also cited Ryan's refusal to specify which tax loopholes he'll close as evidence of trickery.

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Super Committee

Liberals Slam Super Committee Dems For Caving On Taxes -- But Did They?

Brian Beutler | November 15, 2011, 5:46AM

Super Committee Members John Kerry and Patty Murray

Liberals and progressive groups are livid at a Sunday New York Times report, which reads as if Super Committee Democrats are about to capitulate to the GOP: spending cuts now in exchange for the promise of higher revenues later. But Democratic aides privy to the negotiations say the angry reaction misreads the Dems' position. And indeed the most recent Democratic offer to Super Committee Republicans would have squared this issue by automatically nullifying entitlement cuts if future tax legislation didn't raise revenues.

The Times story is based on a comment Republican co-chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) made on CNN's Sunday show State of the Union.

Under this approach, the panel would decide on the amount of new revenue to be raised but would leave it to the tax-writing committees of Congress to fill in details next year, well beyond the Nov. 23 deadline for the panel itself to reach an agreement. That would put off painful political decisions but ensure that the debate over deficit reduction stretched into the election year.

"There could be a two-step process that would hopefully give us pro-growth tax reform," Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the top Republican on the panel.

Progressives took this to imply surrender.

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Paul Krugman

Huh? Newt Declares Obama 'A Paul Krugman Presidency'

Benjy Sarlin | August 2, 2011, 12:09PM

Newt Gingrich took to FOX News Monday night to compare President Obama to, of all people, Paul Krugman, one of the White House's fiercest critics.

"This is a Paul Krugman presidency," Gingrich told Bill O'Reilly. "[Obama] believes that stuff. He actually believes in left-wing economic ideas. The only problem with them is that they don't work."

It was an odd comparison, given that the New York Times columnist has staked out a position as Obama's ultimate nemesis on the left since the very earliest days of his administration.

"If only!" Krugman replied by e-mail, when asked about Newt's claim by TPM.

Krugman made the cover of Newsweek in Obama's very first year in office as part of a profile entitled "OBAMA IS WRONG: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman." Politico's Mike Allen labeled him the "anti-Obama."

At the time of the Newsweek story, Krugman was arguing in his column that Obama's stimulus plan was too small to prevent massive, prolonged unemployment and that the White House had failed to get tough enough on big finance. Needless to say, the stalling recovery today and Obama's recent interest in negotiating multi-trillion dollar spending cuts hasn't led Krugman to change his tone. One recent post recast the president as "Barack Herbert Hoover Obama."

"This is truly a tragedy: the great progressive hope (well, I did warn people) is falling all over himself to endorse right-wing economic fallacies," he wrote.

Update: Krugman has a blog post up entitled "Bwahahahaha, Newt Edition."

"Yes, I'm secretly giving Barack marching orders, and only pretending to be deeply frustrated by his actions and rhetoric," he writes. "Incidentally, those 'left-wing economic ideas' are Economics 101; and try stacking up my economic predictions over the past few years against any of Gingrich's favorites."

This story has been updated.

Medicare

Three Most Common Mistakes Made By So-Called Fact Checkers When Assessing GOP's Medicare Plan

Brian Beutler | June 14, 2011, 3:01PM

President Barack Obama talks with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Oval Office.

Self-appointed independent fact checkers continue to miss the boat on the GOP's Medicare plan. And not just small misses, but big belly flop misses.

The immediate result has been fact-check assessments that ding Democrats for overstating how radical the GOP plan is and give political ammunition to Republicans to use against Democrats. But at a deeper level the misguided fact-checking -- almost always the result of insufficient expertise on Medicare specifically, and health insurance more broadly -- threatens to skew the public policy debate in ways that obscure the truth and complicates the effort to provide the public with a clear assessment of the GOP's plan on the merits.

The list of fact-checker errors and thin analysis is steadily growing but they fit broadly within three general categories. We take them one by one and have the experts weigh in:

MISTAKE #1: The GOP Plan Doesn't End Medicare

This is the single biggest bone of contentions for fact checkers, and it's based on a category error: Specifically, that if you replace one health insurance scheme with a different health insurance scheme, but call both of them "Medicare," then you haven't really "ended" anything.

A widely cited Monday piece by Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler takes Democrats to the mattresses for three different claims they made about the plan in a recent web petition -- the biggest being that Republicans want to scrap the current Medicare program. "[T]he DSCC essentially says: The House Republican budget plan would eliminate Medicare."

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Stimulus

Republicans Try To Roll Back Fed's Job Creation Mandate

Brian Beutler | November 17, 2010, 9:45AM

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

A growing number of Republicans want to tie the hands of the Federal Reserve, choking off perhaps the last best hope for a speedier economic recovery.

In a sluggish economy like this one, policy makers have a handful of powerful tools at their disposal. The most conventional tool -- fiscal stimulus -- is politically out of reach. Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have vowed to block any more deficit spending bills aimed at injecting demand into the economy.

"[W]e will loudly oppose future stimulus bills that only stimulate the deficit," McConnell said at a recent Heritage Foundation speech.

That leaves monetary stimulus. Under its mandate to promote full employment, the Fed is supposed to use tools at its disposal to spur economic growth. Republicans want to stop that too.

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Jobs summit

Google Exec, Columbia Prof, Union Leaders Among Invitees To WH Jobs Summit

Christina Bellantoni | November 30, 2009, 10:33AM

President Barack Obama

President Obama Thursday is hosting a jobs summit at the White House, with the administration putting its full attention toward the economy and unemployment.

Among the 130 attendees are small business owners, experts from the "green jobs" sector, business leaders, academics, city officials and representatives from nonprofits, the White House said.

Some names that jump out right away are Eric Schmidt of Google (he is an informal Obama adviser), New York Times columnist and Nobel economics prize winner Paul Krugman, Columbia Business School professor Joe Stiglitz and Anna Burger of the Change to Win union.

Full list of confirmed attendees after the jump:

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