"Priming the pump" is one of the scariest economic programs you can hear promoted by a president. It is nothing but the promotion of rotund government expansionism justified by confused Keynesian theory.

Investopedia explains:

Pump priming relates to the Keynesian economic theory, named after noted economist John Maynard Keynes, which states that government intervention within the economy, aimed at increasing aggregate demand, can result in a positive shift within the economy...

 The phrase originated with President Hoover's creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) in 1932, which was designed to make loans to banks and industry. This was taken one step further by 1933, when President Roosevelt felt that pump-priming would be the only way for the economy to recover from the Great Depression. Through the RFC and other public works organizations, billions of dollars were spent priming the pump to encourage economic growth.

The phrase was rarely used in economic policy discussions after World War II, even though

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