PAUL KRUGMAN: Anyway, the point is that the recovery has been disappointing, I will admit that. But it's been disappointing largely because we have had incredible cutbacks in public employment, public spending, which Obama didn't control. And the way forward is not more tax cuts for the rich, which haven't worked in Kansas, have never been shown to do what they do. What we really need is a big infrastructure build. That would make total sense given extremely low borrowing costs, given that we need the infrastructure, and given that it would be a job creator. But that's not going to happen with a Republican House.
[...]
KRUGMAN: I think the point is, we actually know extremely well what to do. We know exactly what is needed, and the problem is that people -- the ideology that Grover [Norquist] is giving here is what stands in the way. The fact that you'll have complete, rigid adherence to that ideology, which has failed again and again and again, but nothing has changed. Nothing has been learned from experience.
GROVER NORQUIST: We just compared Reagan and Obama, and Reagan created more jobs, and Reagan created more opportunities.
KRUGMAN: We've got to go back 35 years, to a completely different situation. We had Bush, got all this stuff, none of it delivered. And it's kind of an amazing thing, it's amazing how Bush has become a non-person.
NORQUIST: Well, no. But he is significant spending increases in the last two years of his administration -- Democrats did the budgets, not Republicans. So, you're looking at a number of challenges. And he didn't have a supply-side approach to economics the way Trump is looking at it. Trump's proposals --
GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS (HOST): He isn't talking about controlling spending.
KRUGMAN: No, Trump is completely incoherent on economic policy. You can find him on any given day supporting almost anything.
NORQUIST: You don't like his tax policy. You don't like his tax policy.
KRUGMAN: Well, he said he wants to -- he said maybe he wanted to raise taxes on the rich, then he said he wanted to cut them. To actually try and suss out what Trump means, god knows.
