You know the second coming of Jimmy Carter has arrived when MSM hacks complain about Obama not having enough stuff to spend our taxpayer dollars on. Here is Paul Krugman appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” who responded to George Stephanopoulos’s question on whether he is going to stick to the $600 billion economic recovery spending projection he made on the show a few weeks ago: (h/t Newsbusters)
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: My number will be going up. My problem is that the actual constraint is not going to be political will. No. The actual constraint is going to be finding enough stuff to spend on. Try to find that much (laughter from panel)…No. The words here are shovel ready. Now, how much is shovel ready? How much can you actually get going in time to help this year and this coming year?
GWEN IFILL, PBS: The governors came to town to Philadelphia and they met with the president-elect and they say we have a lot of shovel ready projects.
KRUGMAN: Yeah, but again, what’s a lot? I mean, even with their full wish list you have trouble getting up to 100 billion. So now you start doing other stuff, and you start saying, well, you know, but it’s, it is not that easy, believe it or not, even Washington can’t spend $600 billion in a year very easily. So, to push north of that is hard to do.
Just what we need. Politicians getting their shovels out to dig us into a deeper hole with more entitlement spending. These people really have no clue. I mean throwing money at problems has been tried. And it’s failed spectacularly. What they should be asking how much spending can we cut? Let the people keep more of the money they earn and they will spend it, which stimulates the economy.
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