W. Todd Akin: “The question before us tonight, do we want tax increases or tax decreases. It is a pretty simple choice: Tax increases…”

“The question before us tonight, do we want tax increases or tax decreases. It is a pretty simple choice: Tax increases or tax decreases. Historically there were two guys, one guy plugging each one. One was called little Lord Keynesian economics. That is the one that said what we want to do is we want to do tax increases. If the government just spends enough money, by golly, it is just like standing inside a bucket, grabbing the handle and lifting up, and we will just float our way out of any economic problems. So the idea is government will spend a lot of money and increase taxes. That is a Keynesian approach. The other approach was advanced a little later, after Keynes, and it was Milton Friedman. He said no, when you have your economy in trouble, you are starting to get into a recession, you want to do tax decreases.”