On the recordJuly 21, 2010
Well, I'll tell you something. I sometimes wish the Democrats would just learn from themselves and from their own mistakes, you know, because here is a guy, Henry Morgenthau, who was a contemporary of little Lord Keynes, and he tries this idea. I think it is the equivalent of, if you're from Texas, having those boots with the loops in the back, and you reach down and grab those loops and lift hard and try to fly around the room. The theory is, if the government spends enough money, the economy is going to get better. Now, if any father of a family in this country did something as stupid as that, they'd probably lock him up and put a little white suit on him, you know? To think that if you're in trouble economically that what you should do is go out and spend a ton of money--I mean maybe the theory is to spend a whole ton of money, eat, live and be merry because tomorrow we die, but as an overall theory of economics, this is really silly. They tried it. FDR tried it. This is this guy, Morgenthau, who has come back after 8 years, after taking a recession and turning it into a Great Depression. This wasn't just harming free enterprise and companies. Literally, those companies closed their doors. It wasn't that they were just sort of hunkered down. It wasn't that they were just sort of lean and waiting for better times. They closed the doors and stopped the businesses. So this is what he said. In Congress, he said this: We have tried spending money.…
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