Paul Ryan Quotes

The BBC is locked to the reading of the economy that is run out of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls' office. They think if only you spend and borrow more money you can create growth everywhere.

The truth of the matter of is that stimulus money not only doesn't stimulate; it actually reduces output.

In the 1960s, and stretching back to the 1930s, it was felt by many economists that easy money is a reliable way to increase employment.

We are all Keynesians now.

In an economy, when the government spends more and invests in the economy, that money circulates, and recirculates again and again. So not only does it create jobs once: the investment creates jobs multiple times.

In the '30s, the Keynesian stuff worked at least in the sense that you could print money without inflation because there was all this productivity growth happening. That's not going to work today.

We believe that - the President believes that the economy will continue to grow, that the economy will continue to create jobs, and that we need to do everything we can to enhance that growth and enhance that job creation.

I mean, the reality is unemployment today - over 14 million Americans are unemployed. That's exactly what it was a year ago. I mean, this - the American people know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.

I think stimulus money is an absolute mistake.

Monetary policy cannot do much about long-run growth, all we can try to do is to try to smooth out periods where the economy is depressed because of lack of demand.

The basic idea that if you increase government spending or you cut people's taxes that stimulates the economy and lowers the unemployment rate, is a very widely accepted idea. It's in every economics textbook, that's what we teach our undergraduates, and I certainly try to teach them the truth.

We've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It's more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II.

A policy of adequate governmental outlays at a time when private enterprises is curtailing its expenditures does not reflect a preference for an unbalanced budget. It merely reflects a desire and the need to put idle men, money and material to work.

Aggressive government spending during the Great Recession was absolutely necessary.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

Surely, the best and most effective measure is to get the economy moving and shorten the period of recession or slowdown. That's the rationale for Gordon Brown's 'fiscal stimulus' and it sounds like a good one to me.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.

To protect people's lives and keep our children safe, we must implement public-works spending and do so proudly. If possible, I'd like to see the Bank of Japan purchase all of the construction bonds that we need to issue to cover the cost. That would also forcefully circulate money in the market. That would be positive for the economy, too.

That's the real secret to job creation - not borrowing and spending more money in Washington.

I want to use every tool in the toolbox that's at our disposal to help our economy and put people back to work.

It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable.

The U.K. and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that austerity, fiscal austerity in the short term, is the way to produce real growth. It is not. You've got to spend money.

But if the choice is a cool president and 8 or 10 percent unemployment in a declining economy and a country that seems to be going in the wrong direction and structural unemployment for young people at 50 percent, I'd rather have a dorky president who fixed those problems.

I don't accept as an article of faith that lots of short-term stimulus boosts the economy and gets us back on the long-term trajectory.