WordNet
n. spending money raised by borrowing; used by governments to stimulate their economy [syn: deficit spending, compensatory spending]
introducing water into a pump to improve the seal and start the water flowing
Usage examples of "pump priming".
The money I'd lived on since the game came from that pump priming.
The consensus was that the recovery is slow because the standard method of government stimulation -- pump priming through the Pentagon system -- simply isn't available to the extent that it's been in the past.
Economists and bankers have been pointing out openly for some time that one of the main reasons why the current recovery is so sluggish is that the government has not been able to resort to the traditional pump priming mechanism, the traditional mechanism of economic stimulation, namely increased military spending with all of its multiplier effects.
The pump priming through the Pentagon system, one of the major government devices for management of the economy, simply was not available to the extent that it had been in the past.