Another economic reality check for Mark Kirk from Economic Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman

Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman spoke at Northwestern last night:

Krugman said he blamed the "shadow banking system," a system of banking without government regulation, and the common perception that "U.S. debt was less likely than the debt of Campbell's Soup" for contributing to the financial crisis. The crisis also has happened more quickly than expected and is now moving to developing countries, he said.

"The scary thing about the crisis is that once you think you've found all the skeletons in the financial closet, another one falls out," he said.

Now is the time for fiscal expansion and quick action, he said. The new administration must move quickly and effectively to deal with the crisis, he said.

Mark Kirk consistently voted to increase the debt Krugman credits for our current financial crisis:

• Voted against reducing the country’s debt [House Vote 69 against the amendment and House Vote 104 for the $1.95 Trillion fiscal year 2002 budget proposed by George W. Bush, H Con Res 83, 3/28/01]
• Voted against a plan for balancing the fiscal 2005 budget [House Vote 89 on the amendment and for the fiscal 2005 budget House Vote 92, H Con Res 393, 3/25/04]. The interesting part about Kirk's vote on the amendment in House Vote 89 is that this was on a Blue Dog Democratic proposal to provided for a balanced budget by 2012, cut the deficit in half over the next two years, prevent the passage of additional tax cuts for the wealthy until Congress and the president had taken action to reduce the deficit, and restored pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules to tax cut legislation in order to insure that revenue losses caused by tax cuts were restored by spending cuts or revenue increases in other areas of the budget. This is the sort of thing Kirk is now campaigning on, but he voted against it when it mattered.
• Voted twice to raise the federal debt limit [House Vote 280, HR 4613, 6/22/04; House Vote 536, S 2986, 11/18/04]. This was all about mortgaging your children's future for current tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Kirk says it's about bringing jobs, but so far we haven't seen these jobs. It's just the same old trickle down theories that failed under Reagan, failed under H.W. Bush and failed again under W. Bush and Mark Kirk. These votes were pure political support for the failed economic policies of the past.
• Voted against rules that would have required offsets for spending [House Vote 314, HR 4663, 6/24/04]
• Voted against a fiscally responsible budget that might have helped create budget surplus by 2013 and restored previous cuts supported by Mark Kirk to health care for seniors, education, and first responders, if we didn't now have to bail out hedge fund managers and bankers [House Vote 141, H Con Res 312, 3/13/08].