Even Krugman is working on a 2-5 year time frame

Or so it appears, judging by his latest blog entry.  It’s a short post so just click and read it, but here’s the ending and where I have a serious beef with Krugman:

“you could argue that the president shouldn’t feed the bogus claim that we can close fiscal gaps by eliminating a bit of waste.”

I had commented on this before, and I still think it may be the most important aspect of the debate regarding fiscal stimilus not being addressed.

There certainly is substantial debate about whether or not fiscal stimulus and massive deficit spending by the US Gov is a good (necessary) or horrible idea.  I don’t believe anyone is proposing permanent deficit spending though, even if it looks like we may be heading there.  It is implied but rarely said that eventually, these deficits may return to surpluses that allow us to service and paydown our $11.2 trillion national debt.

As I said in my previous post linked to above, the key to that is exactly what Obama is proposing and Krugman seems to be disparaging:  Spending money not to actively correct inefficiencies and improve enforcement, providing stimulus to our depressed economy while putting the economy on better footing to pay off our growing debt in the future.

If you believe that fiscal stimulus is necessary or helpful, the key to success in a 10+ year time frame would be spending money where returns will outweigh current costs.  That would be found in promoting education to make our workforce more competitive, improving our energy grid and energy sources to reduce the need for expensive imported energy products (and perhaps expensive wars and expensive obsequious relationships with oil-heavy nations), and removing inefficiences, government waste, and perhaps $300 billion of taxes being evade annually to replenish government coffers (I believe Obama’s administration knows a thing or two about the rich’s approach to paying taxes).

Removing waste may not be sufficient to balance the budget in the face of the massive spending outlays being used to buffer the effects of the current recesion, but removing waste is absolutely necessary to restoring some fairness in government, faith in government’s efficacy, and digging out ever-indebted nation out of it’s credit burden.

… and the cow goes moo