While some people may be celebrating the passage in the House of the Ryan-Murray budget as a defeat for the far right, Paul Krugman takes a look at the big picture in his latest column for the New York Times and finds little to cheer.

"[I]f you take a longer perspective," Krugman writes, referring to the Tea Party takeover of Congress in 2010, "what you see is a triumph of anti-government ideology that has had enormously destructive effects on American workers."

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Krugman notes that since Republicans roared back into the House majority some three years ago, counter-cyclical federal government spending has dried up, while state-level spending has nearly "collapsed." And the areas where the cuts have been harshest have been the very same where investment is most important — both in the short- and long-term.

"We haven’t seen anything like the recent government cutbacks since the 1950s, and probably since the demobilization that followed World War II," Krugman writes. "What has been cut? It’s a complex picture, but the most obvious cuts have been in education, infrastructure, research, and conservation."

More from Krugman at the New York Times:

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