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Such realities might not make for a great stump speech, 
but facing them squarely now can save us a lot of head-
aches down the road.’’; 
Whereas, on March 25, 2019, Janet Yellen, Secretary of the 
Treasury, disagreed with those individuals promoting 
MMT who suggest that ‘‘you don’t have to worry about 
interest-rate payments because the central bank can buy 
the debt’’, stating: ‘‘That’s a very wrong-minded theory 
because that’s how you get hyper-inflation.’’; 
Whereas former Secretary of the Treasury and Director of 
the National Economic Council Lawrence H. Summers— 
(1) on March 5, 2019, wrote in an opinion piece in 
the Washington Post entitled ‘‘The left’s embrace of 
modern monetary theory is a recipe for disaster’’ that, 
‘‘contrary to the claims of modern monetary theorists, it 
is not true that governments can simply create new 
money to pay all liabilities coming due and avoid default. 
As the experience of any number of emerging markets 
demonstrates, past a certain point, this approach leads to 
hyperinflation.’’; and 
(2) on March 4, 2019, said that— 
(A) MMT is fallacious at multiple levels; 
(B) past a certain point, MMT leads to hyper-
inflation; and 
(C) a policy of relying on a central bank to fi-
nance government deficits, as advocated by MMT 
theorists, would likely result in a collapsing exchange 
rate; 
Whereas, on February 26, 2019, Jerome Powell, Chair of the 
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, stat-
ed: ‘‘The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that 
can borrow in their own currency I think is just wrong.’’; 
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Whereas, on February 24, 2019, Matt Bruenig, founder of 
the People’s Policy Project, wrote in an article entitled 
‘‘What’s the Point of Modern Monetary Theory’’ that 
‘‘the real point of MMT seems to be to deploy misleading 
rhetoric with the goal of deceiving people about the ne-
cessity of taxes in a social democratic system. If success-
ful, these word games might loosen up fiscal and mone-
tary policy a bit in the short term. But insofar as getting 
government spending permanently up to 50 percent of 
GDP really will require substantially more taxes in the 
medium and long term.’’; 
Whereas, on February 21, 2019, Doug Henwood, a journalist 
and economic analyst, wrote in an article in Jacobin enti-
tled ‘‘Modern Monetary Theory Isn’t Helping’’ that 
‘‘MMT’s lack of interest in the relationship between 
money and the real economy causes adherents to overlook 
the connection between taxing, spending, and the alloca-
tion of resources’’; 
Whereas, on January 28, 2019, in a question and answer ses-
sion with James Pethokoukis of AEIdeas, Stan Veuger, 
visiting lecturer of economics at Harvard University, stat-
ed that, ‘‘if you take MMTers at their word in the most 
aggressive sense, then what you would see is a massive 
debt finance expansion of the welfare state with Medicare 
for All, with a jobs guarantee, and with concerns about 
inflation being deferred entirely to elected officials who 
would have to raise taxes to keep it under control. I think 
in a scenario like that, we do run a risk of going back 
to the 1970s pre-Volker style macroeconomics and I 
think that would be bad.’’; 
Whereas, on January 17, 2019, Michael Strain, Director of 
Economic Policy Studies at AEI, wrote in an opinion ar-
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•HRES 267 IH 
ticle in Bloomberg entitled ‘‘Modern Monetary Theory Is 
a Joke That’s Not Funny’’ that ‘‘if you thought from the 
start that the whole idea sounded like lunacy, you were 
right, even if it’s possible to admit some sliver of sym-
pathy for it’’; 
Whereas Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial 
Prize in Economic Sciences— 
(1) on March 1, 2019, posted on Twitter a point-by- 
point rebuttal to an article entitled ‘‘The Deficit Myth: 
Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s 
Economy’’ by Stephanie Kelton, which concluded with 
Krugman tweeting that— 
(A) ‘‘Sorry, but this is just a mess. Kelton’s re-
sponse misrepresents standard macroeconomics, my 
own views, the effects of interest rates, and the proc-
ess of money creation.’’; 
(B) ‘‘Otherwise I guess it’s all fine.’’; and 
(C) ‘‘See what I mean about Calvinball?’’; and 
(2) on February 12, 2019, wrote in an opinion piece 
in the New York Times the following: ‘‘And debt can’t 
go to infinity—it can’t exceed total wealth, and in fact 
as debt gets ever higher people will demand ever-increas-
ing returns to hold it. So at some point the government 
would be forced to run large enough primary (non-inter-
est) surpluses to limit debt growth.’’; 
Whereas, on November 15, 2019, Jason Fichtner and Kody 
Carmody of the Bipartisan Policy Center wrote in a re-
port entitled ‘‘Does the National Debt Matter? A Look 
at Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT’’ that— 
(1) ‘‘deficits do have a role to play in public finance’’ 
but, ‘‘as interest rates rise, some private-sector projects 
no longer make financial sense and are forgone. Crowd-
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•HRES 267 IH 
ing out private investment ultimately leads to a 
misallocation of resources away from their most economi-
cally productive use, hampering economic growth. . . . 
The more we borrow today, the more expensive it will be 
to continue borrowing in the future. At some point, debt 
has to be paid back. There is no free lunch.’’; 
(2) ‘‘MMT underestimates other downside risks of 
debt’’ and ‘‘MMT advocates note that inflation is the 
only restraint on debt-financed spending. This leads some 
to conclude that under the theory of MMT, debt is not 
a concern, as governments can simply print more money 
to pay off debt. Such a theory is roundly rejected by aca-
demic economists on both sides of the political spec-
trum.’’; 
(3) printing money has costs, including a ‘‘loss of 
credibility for the government’’, an ‘‘inflation risk’’, and 
exacerbating ‘‘exchange rates’’; 
(4) ‘‘MMT assumes away politics’’ and puts ‘‘the 
onus of inflation control on Congress, the institution that 
lately seems worst-equipped to handle it. The Federal Re-
serve—which has spent a long time building extensive 
credibility in its commitment to fight inflation—would be 
largely sidelined.’’; 
(5) ‘‘even MMT admits that deficits and debt mat-
ter’’, noting that Stephanie Kelton has stated: ‘‘I would 
never take the position that we ought to move forward, 
passing legislation with no offsets, to do Green New 
Deals, and Jobs Guarantees, and Medicare for All. In the 
end, MMT’s arguments largely boil down to a disagree-
ment over how much room there is to borrow without ac-
celerating inflation.’’; and 
(6) it is ‘‘hard to pin MMT down on anything at all’’ 
due, in large part, to the fact that ‘‘prominent supporters 
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•HRES 267 IH 
of MMT have taken vague, sometimes contradictory posi-
tions: When politicians make claims about paying for the 
Green New Deal through MMT, stay silent, and when 
economists criticize this view, claim you are being mis-
understood.’’; 
Whereas the March 2019 report entitled ‘‘How Reliable is 
Modern Monetary Theory as a Guide to Policy?’’ by Scott 
Sumner and Patrick Horan of the Mercatus Center at 
George Mason University found that— 
(1) MMT— 
(A) has a flawed model of inflation, which over-
estimates the importance of economic slack; 
(B) overestimates the revenue that can be 
earned from the creation of money; 
(C) overestimates the potency of fiscal policy, 
while underestimating the effectiveness of monetary 
policy; 
(D) overestimates the ability of fiscal authori-
ties to control inflation; and 
(E) contains too few safeguards against the 
risks of excessive public debt; and 
(2) an MMT agenda of having fiscal authorities 
manage monetary policy would run the risk of— 
(A) very high debts; 
(B) very high inflation; or 
(C) very high debts and very high inflation, 
each of which may be very harmful to the broader 
economy; 
Whereas the January 2020 working paper entitled ‘‘A Skep-
tic’s Guide to Modern Monetary Theory’’ by N. Gregory 
Mankiw stated: ‘‘Put simply, MMT contains some kernels 
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•HRES 267 IH 
of truth, but its most novel policy prescriptions do not 
follow cogently from its premises.’’; 
Whereas the January 2019 report entitled ‘‘Modern Mone-
tary Theory and Policy’’ by Stan Veuger of the American 
Enterprise Institute warned that ‘‘hyperinflation becomes 
a real risk’’ when a government attempts to pay for mas-
sive spending by printing money; and 
Whereas the September 2018 report entitled ‘‘On Empty 
Purses and MMT Rhetoric’’ by George Selgin of the Cato 
Institute warned that— 
(1) when it comes to the ability of Congress to rely 
on the Treasury to cover expenditures, Congress is, in 1 
crucial respect, more constrained than an ordinary house-
hold or business is when that household or business relies 
on a bank to cover expenditures because, if Congress is 
to avoid running out of money, Congress cannot write 
checks in amounts exceeding the balances in the general 
account of the Treasury; and 
(2) MMT theorists succeed in turning otherwise 
banal truths about the workings of contemporary mone-
tary systems into novel policy pronouncements that, al-
though tantalizing, are false: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) 
realizes 
that 
large 
deficits 
are 
unsustainable, irresponsible, and dangerous; and 
(2) recognizes— 
(A) that the acceptance of Modern Mone-
tary Theory would lead to higher deficits and 
higher inflation; and 
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(B) the duty of the House of Representa-
tives to abandon Modern Monetary Theory in 
favor of mainstream fiscal and monetary frame-
works. 
Æ 
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