Does Paul Krugman Own Logic?

It’s no shock that liberal darling and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman doesn’t like the GOP or its plan to repeal President Obama’s health control law. However, in his Sunday column he felt it necessary to not only call the Republican effort wrong, the bearded Spock called them illogical.

He begins with an anecdote to prove wrong the GOP’s insistence that the Medicare “Doc Fix,” which totals over $200 billion, should be included in the cost of Obamacare. Many could retort Krugman’s critique by pointing out the $500 billion in Medicare that Obamacare actually cuts, so paying for another year of doctor fixes is very much related to the overall health tab of the United States.

But his main point came in his wholehearted endorsement of the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate (which was handed to them by Nancy Pelosi), “The G.O.P. analysis says that these sums don’t count, because some people have said that these savings would also extend the life of these programs’ trust funds, so counting these savings as deficit reduction would be “double-counting,” because — well, actually it doesn’t make any sense, but it sounds impressive. So, is the Republican leadership unable to see through childish logical fallacies? No,” Krugman writes.

The bottom line of the CBO report says that over the first ten years Obamacare will save money. Krugman hides behind that fact alone to make the case that the GOP’s deficit hawks are indeed illogical. However, as the GOP leaders have repeatedly pointed out, the CBO deals with what’s given to them. They are like a calculator. They do not get paid to interpret the budget games of the former Democrat majority. Simply put the program is set up to begin in four years, while the taxing and fines will be collected starting this year. So, in the ten year CBO estimate they’re calculating ten years of taxes to pay for only six years of program costs. The CBO’s job is not to point out that in the twenty and thirty-year estimates will obliterate the deficit. They’re job is to say, “Yep, taxing for ten years to pay for six comes out to be budget neutral”.

And that’s not their fault, it’s Krugman’s for using the CBO analysis in ways it isn’t intended. In reality, it’s Krugman and others trotting out this meme that truly are illogical. To answer the question above, no, Paul Krugman should be the last person to claim ownership of logic.