Krugman:

Here's what you need to know: The whole story is a myth. There never was a big expansion of government spending.

Reality:

That level of government spending compares unfavorably even to profligate Japan, which is at 36%.

More Krugman:

Consider, in particular, one fact that might surprise you: The total number of government workers in America has been falling, not rising, under Mr. Obama. A small increase in federal employment was swamped by sharp declines at the state and local level -- most notably, by layoffs of schoolteachers. Total government payrolls have fallen by more than 350,000 since January 2009.

This is pretty misleading, since as Fabius Maximus pointed out in January, government payrolls swelled by 326,000 from 2007 to 2009 -- while private payrolls fell by 7 million. And since Obama's Democratic congressional majority took the fiscal reins in 2006, government payrolls have galloped ahead by 575,000. As late as May 2010, there were 22,959,000 government employees, which appears to be a record high.

Krugman's unfalsifiable thesis (apparently he's been taking notes from Al Gore) is that more government spending would always make things better than whatever they are. But this argument fails for a simple reason: the marginal usefulness of government spending tends to fall pretty dramatically at higher percentages of GDP. The first 1% of GDP spent on roads, rail, and regulations have enormous marginal utility, Bridges to Nowhere and million-dollar educrat retirement packages at 45%, not so much. If government could efficiently allocate resources at any arbitrary level of GDP, countries that eliminated the private sector entirely would be leading the world in GDP instead of collapsing or instituting free market reforms.

But there is one notable nugget of wisdom in this piece: Krugman does at least manage to accurately describe his own column.

"...the usual combination of fact-free assertions and cooked numbers."