Paul Krugman: Freezing Out Hope

Paul Krugman is in rare form today. He spares no one, especially President Obama.

There’s this on the federal pay freeze:

The truth is that America’s long-run deficit problem has nothing at all to do with overpaid federal workers. For one thing, those workers aren’t overpaid. Federal salaries are, on average, somewhat less than those of private-sector workers with equivalent qualifications. And, anyway, employee pay is only a small fraction of federal expenses; even cutting the payroll in half would reduce total spending less than 3 percent.

There’s this on the tax increases:

Meanwhile, there’s a real deficit issue on the table: whether tax cuts for the wealthy will, as Republicans demand, be extended. Just as a reminder, over the next 75 years the cost of making those tax cuts permanent would be roughly equal to the entire expected financial shortfall of Social Security.

And there’s this on the Obama Administration, with whom Krugman is less-than-pleased at the moment:

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.

Go read. There’s plenty more vintage Krugman to go around.