Political Quotes

“Twenty years ago, statistics proved that was not possible. There were something called the ``Phillips Curve'' that said: There is a tradeoff; the lower your unemployment rate goes, the higher your inflation rate goes. And everyone said, oh, God, we can't get the unemployment rate down too much because that will spark inflation. If I can just be reminiscent and tell war stories in this crowded Chamber, where I see we are back to three Members--well, the distinguished Senator from Illinois is presiding; and it is an honor to have him in the Chair--in 1963, the Council of Economic Advisers, then chaired by Dr. Walter Heller of the Kennedy administration, was putting together the economic report. This report was created by the Employment Act of 1946 which gave us the institutionalized, countercyclical economic notions. They said: We should have a goal; we should set as a goal for the country an unemployment rate of 4 percent. Now, it won't be easy, but we should be bold. In the Labor Department we were sort of distressed because we had dreams of unemployment below 4 percent. So we got them to change the text and make it an interim goal of 4 percent--again, a dream. Sir, we now are routinely close to 4 percent, have been for almost a year. Thirty years ago, it was something you could not imagine. In a rousing economic report--if there is such a thing--you could say, let's do things that are unimaginable. Now we do not even notice when they are reported every month. It is working.…”