Obama: ‘If Paul Krugman has a good idea…then we’re going to do it.’
Obama: ‘If Paul Krugman has a good idea…then we’re going to do it.’
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has been a frequent critic of President-elect Obama. During the primary season, he faulted Obama for saying there is a Social Security “crisis,” refusing to adopt a mandate in his health care proposals, and not fighting enough on “partisan issues.” In fact, today in his New York Times column, Krugman expresses skepticism at the effectiveness of Obama’s stimulus plan, in particular his tax cuts for businesses:
But right now we seem to be facing two major economic gaps: the gap between the economy’s potential and its likely performance, and the gap between Mr. Obama’s stern economic rhetoric and his somewhat disappointing economic plan.
Today in his press conference, a reporter questioned Obama about Krugman’s criticisms. Obama said that he is open to the economist’s ideas: “If Paul Krugman has a good idea, in terms of how to spend money efficiently and effectively to jump-start the economy, then we’re going to do it.” Watch it:
Watch it:
Last month, Krugman told radio host Bill Press that he is “in communications” with the Obama team.
Transcript:
CHIP REID: Thank you, Mr. President-Elect. I’d like to follow up on that. Larry Summers, as he said, is up on the Hill now, and we’re told he’s getting an earful from some Democrats who say this plan just isn’t big enough. And I know you resisted putting a number on it, but your staff has talked about a high end of $800 billion or something like that. They say if that’s true, and 40 percent of it is tax cuts that don’t have the bang for the buck, that spending has, it’s not big enough. Paul Krugman today said it falls far short for what you’re going to need to put America back to work. How do you respond to those critics?
OBAMA: Look, there’s some people who have said that it’s not big enough, there are others who say it’s too big. Well, the — as I said before, Democrats or Republicans, we welcome good ideas. And so the challenge for all of us, I think, is to identify good ideas, good spending plans, that deliver on my commitment to create or save 3 million jobs. I want this to work. This is not an intellectual exercise, and there is no pride of authorship. If members of Congress have good ideas, if they can identify a project for me that will create jobs in an efficient way, that does not hamper our ability to — over the long term — get control of our deficit, that is good for the economy, then I’m going to accept it.
If Paul Krugman has a good idea, in terms of how to spend money efficiently and effectively to jump-start the economy, then we’re going to do it. If somebody has an idea for a tax cut that is better than a tax cut we’ve proposed, we will embrace it. So, you know, one of the things that I think I’m trying to communicate in this process is for everybody to get past the habit that sometimes occurs in Washington of whose idea is it, what ideological corner does it come from. Just show me. If you can show me that something is going to work, I will welcome it.
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January 9th, 2009 at 12:04 pmSo, if his hurdle is whether the idea is "going to work", how did the Corporate give aways - that nearly everybody admits won't work - get into his proposal?
January 9th, 2009 at 12:09 pm"IF"?............
January 9th, 2009 at 12:23 pmThis is not an intellectual exercise, and there is no pride of authorship.
Hope that's not just a Freudian slip. He should have said, "This not JUST an intellectual exercise, ..." because the point is that THERE IS intelligence and thought going into this exercise.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:24 pmJust like the Obama team was open to Howard Dean?
January 9th, 2009 at 12:34 pmYou need to read Krugman's article to realize Obama ignored the meat of it, or maybe didn't even read it.
Gawd I'm glad I'm not Obama. He's got at least 4 years sitting on a superheated hot seat.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:34 pmObama would be better served getting rid of Rubin et al and hiring Roubini and PK.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:36 pmI think the headline here suggests that Obama is saying that he's going to allow Paul Krugman to dictate how to fix the economy (not that it would be a bad idea). I'm waiting for a platoon of trolls to pounce on that, claiming that Obama is too dim and too inexperienced to be President, and that he's easily shoved around.
The point of the article (not effectively captured in the headline) is that Obama is willing to listen to ANYBODY who might have a good idea, and that good ideas will be implemented no matter where they come from.
This is a breath of fresh air compared to the ultra-political way of forming policy that we we've endured for the past eight years, which resulted in the implementation of a great many BAD ideas because good ones coming from "the other side" were never listened to.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:38 pmyuppers, I do foresee a sh*tstorm over this. Mostly because in the lexicon of the past 8 years listening somehow became equated with a)appearing weak and knuckling under (maybe your idea isn't gospel?) and b)giving a podium to wankers who obviously don't need to be heard (refer to a).
Maybe the new kid on the block thinks the brain has a chance to work better when you engage the ears more often than the mouth.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pmI find this part interesting...
"If Paul Krugman has a good idea, in terms of how to spend money efficiently and effectively... If somebody has an idea for a tax cut that is better... "
So there's two sides to the thing, some spending and some tax cuts. And there can be debate as to what kind of spending and what kind of tax cuts. But the interesting thing that suggests is that not having any tax cuts at all is not on the table.
He's clearly trying to make it next to impossible for the R's to put up a good fight against this. And he knows he only needs a few of them to pass it, so it's just a question of giving those few political cover by including tax cuts of some sort.
I'd like to have something that targeted the middle class exclusively! (since Obama's acting like a waiter taking our orders).
January 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pmKrugman has always criticized presidential economic plans - I think it is part of his job to be the devil's advocate. There is nothing wrong with that particularly if his opinions are given weight by the economic team.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:08 pmObama has not even taken the oath and already the tit-for-tat justification of corrupt politics has started. And not by the least of observers. Declared Hillary fan Paul Krugman posted this in his NYT blog on November 18:
“Everywhere you look, there’s stuff about Bill Clinton’s donors and all that, often with the implication that there must inherently be something dirty going on, because, well, just because.
But I guess that’s just the way things are. After all, do you remember all the grief President Bush got over his family’s questionable business ties?”
Now, nobody is asking to forget the Bush phallacy even before it came to an end, but this disculpation of one person by pointing at his/her predecessor’s actions, especially out of the pen of a Nobel prize winner, is just not what we need right now. Let’s hope Krugman doesn’t set the tone for the mainstream press. Change: yes we could, but only if it suits us?
Read more on Crunchreport.com
January 9th, 2009 at 1:10 pmElbruce and Miss Molly - I am with you.
Obama is not only going to be able to deflect republican criticism with this intramural debate, but he is also showing that the previous policy of listening only to one side of issues has doubtlessly been proven to be an abject failure.
How the repugs have the gall to criticize the guy who isn't even in office yet when their guy has been a profound failure is further proof of their sanctimonious hypocrisy.
Obama frequently demonstrates (to the frustration of many Dems) that he listens to the opposition, he listens to criticism and he takes what he thinks is the best for incorporation into his own plans.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:18 pmWe are all so accustomed to Bush and his sycophantic administration and congress who demeaned all Democratic ideas, to the point of even shutting them out of many meetings, that the knee-jerk reaction is to retaliate in kind.
Obama doesn't see it that way - his way is the preferred way, I am convinced; it just doesn't always go down easily with the gut reaction we all feel at this time.
Krugman is a brilliant economist, but he doesn't have to worry about the political aspects of the plan. Like other people have said above, this is about stopping the inevitable Republican obstruction of the recovery package. He's making it difficult for Republicans to oppose or obstruct the plan, which would be disastrous. Obama is trying to prevent the political fiasco we saw with the auto bailout.
Obama is playing the game you have to play in Washington. He has to make sure it passes quickly, and also make sure it has widespread bipartisan support. Otherwise, if the plan does not work as planned, Republicans will blame Democrats and say it failed because Democrats did not listen to them. That could damage the Dems politically in the future, and possibly lead to Republicans taking back the House and/or Senate. If Republicans do that, Obama will not be able to enact much of anything.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pmShocked and Awed,
Faux News would be proud. Let's be careful about taking things out of context. You forgot the one line from Krugman's post that makes sense of the two paragraphs you pasted:
"Neither do I."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/clinton-business-issues/
I'd like to think it was a mistake but, considering it is the only line you left out of the post ...
Yes, Krugman has been critical of Obama on a number of occasions. It would be better if you addressed the merit of his arguments rather than distorting them.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:46 pmShocked and Awed Says:
Obama has not even taken the oath and already the tit-for-tat justification of corrupt politics has started. And not by the least of observers. Declared Hillary fan Paul Krugman...
Show of hands - who else is f**king sick and tired of all this "Obama vs. Hillary" crap? That fight is OVER. Get OVER it.
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windsor Says:
And Obama meets with Powell today to discuss “Universal Service”?
Does anyone feel a DRAFT?
Here's Obama's universal service plan. It's nothing scary at all. Powell has been working in the area of volunteer coordination since he lift BushCo, so he's the guy to talk to on that.
From change.gov:
Basically he's expanding the whole "-corps" (Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) thing into a whole lot of new fields and giving a whole lot more people incentives and opportunity to participate.
That's been up on his site from the beginning, but IMO it's one of the most underreported initiatives he's got coming down the pike. It doesn't sound like much, but in scope it's the one thing most likely to radically transform America, by creating a culture of mutual service and redefining the very concept of "opportunity." In any case, it's worth a careful read.
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Marie Says:
How the repugs have the gall to criticize the guy who isn’t even in office yet when their guy has been a profound failure is further proof of their sanctimonious hypocrisy.
"The repugs" will continue to criticize him, since opposition is the only "idea" they have left. However, the number of people who identify themselves as R is going to continue to shrink the more Obama throws those bones at them. After eight years of "my way or the highway" politics (admittedly because of the R's), I think we've all forgotten what positive political dealmaking even looks like any more.
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BrianFL Says:
Krugman is a brilliant economist, but he doesn’t have to worry about the political aspects of the plan.
Hear, hear. This is the crucial thing right there, and the reason that Obama can be right, Krugman can be right, but they can still disagree - their fields don't completely overlap. Obama has to not only present a good plan, but also to make it happen.
I hope that Obama can get a big enough package through to do the job without having to give too much up. But it's not going to be 100% of what economists would like to see in any case. How much he can get is up to his skill as a politician, so I'm not too terribly worried.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:56 pmBrainFL,
I think most of us understand the political contraints Obama is trying to operate under - although I tend to think he and most other Democratic leaders greatly underestimate their position. But if implementing bad policy is the price you have to play to get in this game, what have we gained?
If Obama wants to "work" with the republicans, $300B was way too high to start.
The alternative would be to put together a package of good measures and force the republicans to oppose them - and take the heat. The path he has chosen allows the republicans to endanger the success of the stimulus while getting one more gift for their buddies. A win/win for them because if this package does fail, no matter how much input he gives them, they will still point at him and the democrats - and the media will be right there cheerleading.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:05 pmThe fascists running this country are lucky that you people have no idea what your talking about.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:06 pmIs Obama (lawyer/political scientist) suggesting that Paul Krugman (Nobel winning progressive Economist) doesn't have a good idea?
All Obama knows about economics is what his advisors tell him. All Obama knows about foreign policy and intelligence is what his advisors tell him.
Question... If Obama is no expert on foreign policy and economics, how can you say that Obama picked these people???
This is just another case of Obamas "transition team" excluding real progressive ideas.
Obamas a puppet. His handlers are trying to take his Blackberry away from him as we speak lol.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pmOObama: ‘If Paul Krugman has a good idea…then we’re going to do it.’
Nice left-handed compliment! In otherwords, Obama is saying Krugman doesn't have any good ideas!
January 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pmThe gap between Obama's rhetoric and his policies has always been his problem. While he was talking about "change" rhetorically, his voting record in the state house and senate looked more like a blue-dog democrat than any agent of change. Most people were easily swayed by the rhetoric and never paid attention to his actual voting habits (like his FISA stance). They were too busy buying into the Clinton Derangement syndrome and their anger at Hillary's AUMF vote that led to the invasion of Iraq (justified anger no doubt) to note that Obama was going to be a mixed bag...
Anyone that thinks Obama stands for "change" from standard democratic politicians just isn't paying attention. That being said, standard democrats like Bill Clinton produced the largest economic boom in american history, so it's certainly possible that Obama ushers in a new age of prosperity if he's open minded enough and not too blue dog. My fear is his more conservative side will cause him to disregard the advice of experts like Krugman in favor of the more conservative voices that usually come from the DLC (Biden) and the republicans... Only time will tell how willing Obama will be to listen to the voices of reason on a whole host of progressive issues... I still HOPE that Obama will CHANGE his more conservative attitudes and ways...
January 9th, 2009 at 3:17 pmrepublicans hate facts Says:
The gap between Obama’s rhetoric and his policies has always been his problem. While he was talking about “change” rhetorically, his voting record in the state house and senate looked more like a blue-dog democrat than any agent of change...
I had to run to Wikipedia to make sure my definition of "blue dog" isn't wrong. This is the umpteenth time I've heard somebody complain that actually being slightly-left-of-center qualifies someone as counting as right wing. Fortunately, it's still you who's confused, and not me.
I will admit that Obama's voting base was much further to the left than he is. And I'm sure you're further to the left than he is also. But that's not the same thing as demonstrating that he's to the right of center.
Reminds me of the wingnuts claiming that center-right people are "radical leftists," just flipped around. Just because you've marched way way off one end of the political spectrum, you don't get to claim that everybody else marched the other way.
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johnfive Says:
The fascists running this country are lucky that you people have no idea what your talking about.
Absolutely. If I ever get my head out of my ass, boy will those fascists be in trouble!
January 9th, 2009 at 3:38 pmGood call, ElBruce. Either Obama is a con artist of the first water or he just may have some good ideas. I'll admit some of his calls have me a tad nervous but he isn't calling the shots yet. He deserves a chance.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens to a car going 100mph in one direction and you slap the tranny into high gear in the opposite.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=13888"
January 11th, 2009 at 2:34 amSorry folks... I'm from the old school, so I'm still trying to learn how to post a link...
This is from my favorite Australian jornalist, John Pilger. I got it from antiwar.com
it is an excellent article! It may upset lots of blind Obama's supporters, but as I stated previously, I'll not follow Obama like a religious sect. I'll be critical and hpeful he will do better than the war criminals Bush/Chenney & Co.
Beware of Obama's Groundhog Day
by John Pilger
One of the cleverest films I have seen is Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who finds himself stuck in time. At first he deludes himself that the same day and the same people and the same circumstances offer new opportunities. Finally, his naivety and false hope desert him and he realizes the truth of his predicament and escapes. Is this a parable for the age of Obama?
Having campaigned with “Change you can believe in,” President-elect Barack Obama has named his A-team. They include Hillary Clinton, who voted to attack Iraq without reading the intelligence assessment and has since threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran on behalf of a foreign power, Israel. During his primary campaign, Obama referred repeatedly to Clinton’s lies about her political record. When he appointed her secretary of state, he called her “my dear friend.”
Obama’s slogan is now “continuity.” His secretary of defense will be Robert Gates, who serves the lawless, blood-soaked Bush regime as secretary of defense, which means secretary of war (America last had to defend itself when the British invaded in 1812). Gates wants no date set for an Iraq withdrawal and “well north of 20,000” troops to be sent to Afghanistan. He also wants America to build a completely new nuclear arsenal, including “tactical” nuclear weapons that blur the distinction with conventional weapons.
Another product of “continuity” is Obama’s first choice for CIA chief, John Brennan, who shares responsibility for the systematic kidnapping and torturing of people, known as “extraordinary rendition.” Obama has assigned Madeleine Albright to report on how to “strengthen US leadership in responding to genocide.” Albright, as secretary of state, was largely responsible for the siege of Iraq in the 1990s, described by the UN’s Denis Halliday as genocide.
There is more continuity in Obama’s appointment of officials who will deal with the economic piracy that brought down Wall Street and impoverished millions. As in Bill Murray’s nightmare, they are the same officials who caused it. For example, Lawrence Summers will run the National Economic Council. As treasury secretary, according to the New York Times, he “championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the... instruments – aka toxic assets – that have spread financial losses [and] refused to heed critics who warned of dangers to come.”
There is logic here. Contrary to myth, Obama’s campaign was funded largely by rapacious capital, such as Citigroup and others responsible for the sub-prime mortgage scandal, whose victims were mostly African Americans and other poor people.
Is this a grand betrayal? Obama has never hidden his record as a man of a system described by Martin Luther King as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Obama’s dalliance as a soft critic of the disaster in Iraq was in line with most Establishment opinion that it was “dumb.” His fans include the war criminals Tony Blair, who has “hailed” his appointments, and Henry Kissinger, who describes the appointment of Hillary Clinton as “outstanding.” One of John McCain’s principal advisers, Max Boot, who is on the Republican Party’s far right, said: “I am “gobsmacked by these appointments. [They] could just as easily have come from a President McCain.”
Obama’s victory is historic, not only because he will be the first black president, but because he tapped in to a great popular movement among America’s minorities and the young outside the Democratic Party. In 2006 Latinos, the country’s largest minority, took America by surprise when they poured into the cities to protest against George W Bush’s draconian immigration laws. They chanted: “Si, se puede!” (“Yes we can!”), a slogan Obama later claimed as his own. His secretary for homeland security is Janet Napolitano who, as governor of Arizona, made her name by stoking hostility against Latino immigrants. She has militarized her state’s border with Mexico and supported the building of a hideous wall, similar to the one dividing occupied Palestine.
On election eve, reported Gallup, most Obama supporters were “engaged” but “deeply pessimistic about the country’s future direction.” My guess is that many people knew what was coming, but hoped for the best. In exploiting this hope, Obama has all but neutered the antiwar movement that is historically allied to the Democrats. After all, who can argue with the symbol of the first black president in this country of slavery, regardless of whether he is a warmonger? As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, Obama is a “brand” like none other, having won the highest advertising campaign accolade and attracted unprecedented sums of money. The brand will sell for a while. He will close Guantanamo Bay, whose inmates represent less than one per cent of America’s 27,000 “ghost prisoners.” He will continue to make stirring, platitudinous speeches, but the tears will dry as people understand that President Obama is the latest manager of an ideological machine that transcends electoral power. Asked what his supporters would do when reality intruded, Stephen Walt, an Obama adviser, said: “They have nowhere else to go.”
Not yet. If there is a happy ending to the Groundhog Day of repeated wars and plunder, it may well be found in the very mass movement whose enthusiasts registered voters and knocked on doors and brought Obama to power. Will they now be satisfied as spectators to the cynicism of “continuity”? In less than three months, millions of angry Americans have been politicized by the spectacle of billions of dollars of handouts to Wall Street as they struggle to save their jobs and homes. It as if seeds have begun to sprout beneath the political snow. And history, like Groundhog Day, can repeat itself. Few predicted the epoch-making events of the 1960s and the speed with which they happened. As a beneficiary of that time, Obama should know that when the blinkers are removed, anything is possible.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:37 amThis is also from John Pilger!
You can also YouTube John Pilger's documentary "War on Democracy"
Beware of the Obama Hype
by John Pilger
My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of president John F. Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I met Penn Jones Jr., editor of the Midlothian Mirror. Except for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy’s murder.
This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth. Journalists such as Penn Jones, independent of vested power, indefatigable and principled, often reflect ordinary American attitudes, which have seldom conformed to the stereotypes promoted by the corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic. Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel, who died the other day, or scan the surveys that unerringly attribute enlightened views to a majority who believe that "government should care for those who cannot care for themselves" and are prepared to pay higher taxes for universal health care, who support nuclear disarmament and want their troops out of other people’s countries.
Returning to Texas, I am struck again by those so unlike the redneck stereotype, in spite of the burden of a form of brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the history of the world, and all means are justified, including the spilling of copious blood, in maintaining that superiority.
That is the subtext of Barack Obama’s "oratory." He says he wants to build up U.S. military power; and he threatens to ignite a new war in Pakistan, killing yet more brown-skinned people. That will bring tears, too. Unlike those on election night, these other tears will be unseen in Chicago and London. This is not to doubt the sincerity of much of the response to Obama’s election, which happened not because of the unction that has passed for news reporting from America since 4 November (e.g. "liberal Americans smiled and the world smiled with them") but for the same reasons that millions of angry emails were sent to the White House and Congress when the "bailout" of Wall Street was revealed, and because most Americans are fed up with war.
Two years ago, this antiwar vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W. Bush to continue his blood fest. For his part, the "antiwar" Obama never said the illegal invasion of Iraq was wrong, merely that it was a "mistake." Thereafter, he voted in to give Bush what he wanted. Yes, Obama’s election is historic, a symbol of great change to many. But it is equally true that the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class. The courageous Martin Luther King recognized this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese, then being slaughtered by a liberal Democratic administration. And he was shot. In striking contrast, a young black major serving in Vietnam, Colin Powell, was used to "investigate" and whitewash the infamous My Lai massacre. As Bush’s secretary of state, Powell was often described as a "liberal" and was considered ideal to lie to the United Nations about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Condoleezza Rice, lauded as a successful black woman, has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice.
Obama’s first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians – an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people’s loathing of the United States and the spawning of jihadism.
No serious scrutiny of this is permitted within the histrionics of Obamamania, just as no serious scrutiny of the betrayal of the majority of black South Africans was permitted within the "Mandela moment." This is especially marked in Britain, where America’s divine right to "lead" is important to elite British interests. The once respected Observer newspaper, which supported Bush’s war in Iraq, echoing his fabricated evidence, now announces, without evidence, that "America has restored the world’s faith in its ideals." These "ideals," which Obama will swear to uphold, have overseen, since 1945, the destruction of 50 governments, including democracies, and 30 popular liberation movements, causing the deaths of countless men, women and children.
None of this was uttered during the election campaign. Had it been allowed, there might even have been recognition that liberalism as a narrow, supremely arrogant, war-making ideology is destroying liberalism as a reality. Prior to Blair’s criminal warmaking, ideology was denied by him and his media mystics. "Blair can be a beacon to the world," declared the Guardian in 1997. "[He is] turning leadership into an art form."
Today, merely insert "Obama." As for historic moments, there is another that has gone unreported but is well under way – liberal democracy’s shift towards a corporate dictatorship, managed by people regardless of ethnicity, with the media as its clichéd façade. "True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr., the Texas truth-teller, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you’re meant to think and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."
January 11th, 2009 at 2:55 amI guess Krugman should come up with the bright idea of prosecuting war crimes....
January 12th, 2009 at 1:18 am