Economist Paul Krugman explains why Republican coronavirus relief proposals are 'insultingly inadequate'

Republicans and Democrats have been making radically different proposals for a coronavirus relief package, and the proposals that have been coming from the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress are much more comprehensive. Liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman compares the two in a Twitter thread posted over the weekend, slamming GOP ideas as "insultingly inadequate" and stressing that Democrats shouldn't water down their proposals in the "name of bipartisanship."

Krugman posts, "So Rs want Biden to drastically scale back economic relief in the name of bipartisanship. Their offer is insultingly inadequate, and their claims that using reconciliation would 'poison the well' are rich given how they rammed through the 2017 tax cut."

In his Times column, Krugman has been stressing that an economic crisis as severe as the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic warrants an aggressive economic relief package.

"The major items in the Biden proposal are very popular, generally with >60% approval," Krugman tweets. "Why defer to a party that is lockstep opposed to what the public wants?"

Krugman adds, "And one particularly annoying point: Rs having the nerve to complain that the $1400 checks are poorly targeted. The 2017 tax cut delivered 79% of its benefits to people with >$100K income."

Democrats, according to Krugman, are under no obligation to pursue "bipartisanship" when the GOP is full of conspiracy theorists who don't even believe that Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election: