Byron Dorgan: “I appreciate the comment. This proposal is not new. The States have it in their constitutions. Presumably, if there will…”

“I appreciate the comment. This proposal is not new. The States have it in their constitutions. Presumably, if there will be a real mess as a result of this proposal, the State courts will have already demonstrated that kind of a mess. But the other point made is that this proposal is countercyclical in the Keynesian sense. Keynes was an economist who believed that the Government, through its spending patterns, can really affect our economy. When things slow down, we can have massive Government investment to speed them up. I studied Keynes. I even taught Keynes in college a bit. And no one can convince me that anybody in the history of humankind has ever been more Keynesian than this country has been lately. Can you be more Keynesian or stimulative than $300 billion deficits? I doubt it. We had what you would call a gigantic Keynesian countercyclical stimulus as we moved into the recession. But of course nobody has repealed the business cycle. Nobody ever will. I do not demean the argument made by this amendment's sponsors that we need the opportunity to use fiscal policy at the Federal level, complimenting monetary policy, to respond to the business cycle. Clearly we do. But I just say that if one holds out the hope of some countercyclical Keynesian stimulus as the method by which we will improve our economy, we have demonstrated the absurdity of that in recent years.”