On ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Paul Krugman and George Will agreed that the gubernatorial recall election on Tuesday is a microcosm of what the nation faces — but they differed on why.
The roundtable exchange with host George Stephanopoulos:
STEPHANOPOULOS: We have a couple minutes left before we have to take a break, and I just quickly want to go to you, George Will, because you’re calling this recall election in Wisconsin, coming up on Tuesday, Governor Scott Walker, the Republican, facing a recall, the second most important election this year.
WILL: Yes, because it’s a microcosm of what the country faces, an attempt to change the trajectory of the public sector. You have this extraordinary conflict there where unions are defending their privileged position. And it does look as though Wisconsin people are going to try and take that back.
The man running against Scott Walker, Mayor Barrett of Milwaukee, has used the Walker reforms to save $19 million in the Milwaukee budget itself, so he’s running against a man whose reforms he’s emulating and using.
KRUGMAN: And yet, of course, Walker is proposing tax cuts that will do much more to hurt the budget than any of these alleged savings. So this is — it is a microcosm. It is — it’s not — it’s not fiscal responsibility versus irresponsibility. It is a vision of what kind of country you want to have and whether we’re going to redistribute income upwards.
WILL: A more than $3 billion budget that he inherited — deficit has now become a surplus.
