Kerby Anderson

All of a sudden deficits matter now that we have a new president and a new administration. That’s about the only conclusion you can come to with the radical change in perspective from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Kevin Williamson, in a recent column, reminds us what columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote back in October. He said that future president Hillary Clinton should ignore people worried about deficits and the national debt and engage in “years of deficit-financed infrastructure spending, if she can.” A little over two months later, Krugman wrote that: “Deficits matter again.”

His argument is that the unemployment numbers and wage figures suggest we have returned to full employment so that we don’t need the emergency measures he advocated a few weeks before the election. Of course, those numbers aren’t that different today than they were in October. The real reason is that deficits and debt don’t matter, unless you are a Republican president.

Actually they do matter regardless of who is in the White House and which party controls Congress. You can find newspaper columns I wrote about this when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton were president. You can even find Viewpoint commentaries I have written and recorded when George W. Bush and Barack Obama were president.

Let’s look at these last two presidents. When Bush came into office, the federal debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left office and when Obama took office it was was $10.63 trillion. The federal debt is now $19.97 trillion. And if you want to blame Congress, both parties are to blame. During that time Republicans controlled Congress some of the time, and Democrats controlled Congress at other times.

I welcome columnists who believe that deficits and debt are important. I just wonder where they were when President Obama and Congress were running up more than $9 trillion in national debt.