Krugman: "No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t."

And speaking of the President's stimulus plan, my hero Paul Krugman had this to say yesterday:

One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.

The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.

On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the “flip your house to your brother” provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.

After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.

Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.

Mr. Obama’s postpartisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead, he let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said — that increasing spending is the whole point of the plan.

He has a lot more to say, but I am wary of cutting and pasting whole articles these days, what with the uproar over blogging content. Read the whole piece if you can, though.

As many bloggers have asked, where are the REST of the economists on this issue?

UPDATE: An interesting comment from Digby:

On Blitzer this afternoon:

Alex Castellanos: I know Krugman won the Nobel Prize, but so did Al Gore. It can't be that hard. (laughter.)

And if economists were that good, they'd all be rich and they're not. So let's take all this with a grain of salt here.

[snip]

This person was on CNN throughout the presidential campaign, which makes some sense since he was in the capacity of "Republican campaign consultant." But he has no business being on television commenting on anything but dirty campaign tactics, which is where his expertise lies. He is a professional liar who admits to doing anything necessary to back his team and who even village "polite society" is squeamish about cable.