re: WaPo - Republicans do complete flip on budget deficit

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Well I hope you are not referring to me personally because I have always been a deficit hawk

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WaPo - WaPo does complete flip on budget deficit

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So which Krugman are we supposed to believe?

[] Krugman 2003 [deficit at 3% of GDP, 10-year deficit projection $1.8 trillion]: "I'm terrified ... we're looking at a fiscal crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high ... the conclusion is inescapable ... the task is simply impossible ... the fiscal train wreck, is already under way." Or,

[] Krugman 2009 [deficit at 11% of GDP, 10-year deficit projection $9 trillion]: What's to worry? The Ozzie & Harriet era of government finance will be easy enough to bring back. Just stabilize the debt in terms of GDP and be happy!

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The numbers? The deficit in fiscal year 2004 -- $413 billion, 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.

Back then, a disapproving Krugman called the deficit "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country. ... The only time postwar that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years, and that was with unemployment close to 10 percent." Take away the Social Security surplus spent by the government, he said, and "we're running at a deficit of more than 6 percent of GDP, and that is unprecedented."

...Fast-forward to 2010.

The numbers: projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 -- over $1.5 trillion, more than 10 percent of GDP.

This sets a post-WWII record in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP. And if the Obama administration's optimistic projections of the economic growth fall short, things will get much worse. So what does Krugman say now?

We must guard against "deficit hysteria." In "Fiscal Scare Tactics," his recent column, Krugman writes: "These days it's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we're told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren't stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they're reported as if they were facts, plain and simple."

He continues, "And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction." Krugman believes Bush lied us into the Iraq War. Just as people unreasonably feared Saddam Hussein, they now have an unwarranted fear of today's deficit.

Questions: Didn't Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit "enormous"? Wouldn't he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10 percent of GDP mega-normous? Didn't he describe the economy with 5.5 percent unemployment as "weak"? Isn't the current economy, at 9.7 percent unemployment, even weaker? If the 2004 deficit was "comparable to the worst we've ever seen in this country," wouldn't today's much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?

Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: "The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs." The deficit "should be bigger"?!

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Sad to see....

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republicans understand short term deficit increases happen as you roll out specific policy that corrects long term issues. As those issues heal, it takes a marked amount of time for the benefits to be seen...so in reality, the short term deficit is viewed by idiots as increasing.

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