Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:03 pm
Paul Krugman dismantled 35 years of failed Republican economic policy in two minutes during a debate with Grover Norquist.
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Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
KRUGMAN: Anyway, the point is that the recovery has been disappointing, I will admit that, but it’s been disappointing largely because we have had incredible cutbacks in public employment, public spending, which Obama didn’t control. And the way forward is not more tax cuts for the rich, which haven’t worked in Kansas, hasn’t — have never been shown to do what they do. What we really need is a big infrastructure build, that would make total sense given extremely low borrowing costs given that we need it the infrastructure and given that it would be a job creator. But that’s not going to happen with a Republican House.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Donald Trump agrees with that. The question is, how to pay for it.
Well, and will the house support it?
NORQUIST: The argument is growth.
But we had $800 billion thrown at this issue and we were told that was going to create jobs and none of the jobs that they said were going to happen, the economy continued to do poorly with all of that debt that was built up, $800 billion for the stimulus package. That policy doesn’t work. It’s not going to work.
If you have pro-growth policies and you talk about states, look at Taxes, look at Florida, look at states — North Carolina where they’re reducing taxes and spending.
Kansas has a challenge where the Supreme Court tells them they have to spend money and then people say, oh my goodness, you cut tacks too much. The Supreme Court demanding — so, but look at the states with higher tax, Illinois, versus states like Texas without and you see different job creation.
KRUGMAN: I think the point is we actually know extremely well what to do. We know exactly what is needed and the problem is the people — the ideology that Grover is giving here is what stands in the way. The fact that you’ll have complete rigid adherence to that ideology, which has failed again and again and again, but nothing has changed, nothing has been learned from experience.
NORQUIST: Look at Reagan and Obama, and Reagan created more jobs and Reagan…
KRUGMAN: They’ve got to go back 35 years to a completely different situation. We had Bush, got all this stuff, none of it delivered. And it’s kind of an amazing thing how Bush has become a nonperson.
NORQUIST: Well, no, but he is a significant spending increases in the last two years of his administration. Democrats did the budgets, not Republicans, so you’re looking at a number of challenges and he didn’t have a supply side approach to economics the way Trump is looking at.
I mean, Trump’s proposed — he’s also talking about regulation.
KRUGMAN: Trump is completely incoherent on economic policy. I mean, you can find him on any given day supporting almost anything.
Well, he said he wanted to — maybe he wanted to raise taxes on the rich, then he said he wanted to cut them. I mean, to actually try to suss out what Trump means, god knows.
Krugman was right. Republican economic ideologues like Grover Norquist ignore the record of economic failure behind supply side economics. What Norquist didn’t mention was that Reagan raised taxes. Supply side economics didn’t grow Reagan’s economy, tax increases did. Republicans also forget about the recession that happened after Reagan left office. If fact, Republicans ignore both Bush administrations because they prove that the ideology Republicans are selling doesn’t work.
Krugman took apart 35 years of conservative economic policy failure in two minutes and left Norquist clinging on to the false myth of Ronald Reagan. Trump is going to crash the economic if he ever gets the opportunity to implement his plan to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires by $3 trillion.
Paul Krugman showed that conservative economic ideology is nothing more than a massive wealth redistribution plan to the rich.
Everyone knows what needs to be done to boost the economy. The problem is billionaires who own the House Republican majority are never going to allow it to happen.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
