This morning on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, a caller asked Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) how Republicans would solve the current economic crisis. He replied by insisting that the best cure was more tax cuts, and said that recessions are simply “part of freedom”:
I don’t think we can figure out how to outlaw recessions any more than we can outlaw tornadoes or outlaw hurricanes. … Economic growth has never gone in one straight line up. It goes in a zigzag line. It’s a part of freedom. Sometimes freedom can be messy. Sometimes freedom has reversals. But it certainly beats the alternative.
Watch it:
As another conservative luminary once pointed out, “Freedom is untidy.” Of course, recessions are hardly the property of free countries alone; the economic crisis has hurt plenty of autocratic countries as well.
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