Krugman tells austerity advocate Burnett: The debt is 'not an urgent crisis'

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman once again pushed back on the notion that America needs to engage in massive suspending cuts now to deal with the country's debt Friday evening.

Appearing on CNN's Up Front With Erin Burnett,  Krugman rejected Burnett's premise of advocating for austerity measures to tackle America's debt and deficit, offering his usual recommendations for more spending.

"The fact of the matter is vast countries, with their own currencies able to borrow on their own currencies, are able to carry heavy debt loads for a long time," he said. "This is not an urgent crisis. Give me an economic recovery (and) I'll become a fiscal hawk, but not now.

"The other thing to say is that, right now, trying to bring that budget deficit down doesn't even work, doesn't even work in purely fiscal terms. It shrinks the economy that reduces tax revenues. It damages our long run growth because when workers have been unemployed for a long periods of time, they eventually drop out of the work force, they don't come back . When students can't get jobs coming out of college, they never get their careers started. And those are our future tax payers that you're undermining. So this is not the time."

WATCH: Video from CNN, which was broadcast on May 18, 2012.