Paul Krugman wrote a piece for yesterday's NYTimes praising the stimulus plans of Edwards and Clinton and criticizing Obama's plan. As Obama's plan contains no alternative energy plan and includes cross the board tax cuts, he sees it as further to the right than the plans proposed by the other candidates.
That may be the case, but considering that this is a fairly technical economic issue "further to the right" does not constitute legitimate criticism of the policy. As I said in an earlier post (Fiscal Stimulus Showdown) alternative energy programs, while laudable in their goals, have yet to be shown to be an effective stimulus tool, read, they're probably going to take a while to implement. Broad-based tax cuts, while not as targeted as one would like, get money into people's pockets much more quickly.
Delong takes the same tack in attacking Krugman's rather shallow analysis of the stimulus plans in his blog. To be fair, he uses the same Elmendorf and Furman briefing I used as a jumping off point so perhaps this fight is really Krugman versus Brookings.
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