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For several years now I have been involved in a project investigating the theoretical and practical possibilities of promoting full employment and price stability in an economy using state money through a government-sponsored job guarantee and management of the national budget based on the principles of functional finance. Discussion and debate on any or all aspects of this work is therefore very welcome. On the face of it, Malcolm Sawyer, author of a recent article in this journal on the subject (2003), would seem to be an ideal commentator. A leading Post Keynesian economist at one of the premiere heterodox graduate programs in England (Leeds University), he has also been very close to the project from its inception. Sawyer was a resident scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College when L. Randall Wray, Stephanie Bell, and I arrived there in the fall of 1997 to begin working on the project. Both Stephanie Bell and I presented papers on various aspects of the project at two of the Leeds University Business School postgraduate conferences, organized by Sawyer’s graduate students and attended by Sawyer. Both papers were published in the conference proceedings, also edited by Sawyer’s graduate students (see Forstater 1997a; Bell 1998b). Sawyer has been in attendance at many of the conferences where this work has been presented, including one or more of the Post Keynesian summer workshops, the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) conferences at the University of Newcastle, and various Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) and Eastern Economic Association (EEA) meetings, as well as a conference held at Notre Dame. Sawyer also visited the University of Missouri—Kansas City (UMKC) for an extended period more recently. The editor of the Journal of Economic Issues and I have agreed that I will concentrate on one or two issues in this note rather than Sawyer’s entire article (2003). The primary issue I want to address is the claim by Sawyer that the employer of last resort (ELR) addresses only one barrier to high levels of employment, insufficient aggregate demand, and ignores all others. I will also address the related point raised by Sawyer that functional finance—by itself and as formulated by Abba Lerner—is incapable of achieving true full employment because it is only effective for dealing with unemployment due to lack of effective demand. Finally, by way of a conclusion, I will briefly address Sawyer’s claim that ELR employment is “underemployment or unemployment by another name.”