(Excerpts)
To: c-news@world.std.com
Subject: Balanced Budget Quotes 1790 to 1992
From: xxx@yyy.com (Rey Moloney)
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 94 03:15:00 -0600
Balanced Budget Quotes
"I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending . . . on
the extinguish of the public debt before we engage in any war.
. . . If the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable
size, its entire discharge will be despaired of, and we shall
be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and
rottenness, closing with revolution."
Thomas Jefferson
To Gallatin
1809
"I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the
rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to
preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load
us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between
economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Thomas Jefferson
To S. Kercheval
1816
"If I could add one amendment to the Constitution, it would be
to prohibit the Federal Government from borrowing funds. . .
. We should consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle
posterity with our debts and morally bound to pay them
ourselves."
Thomas Jefferson
"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our
Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for
the reduction of the administration of our government to the
genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional
article, taking from the federal government the power of
borrowing."
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to John Taylor
November 26, 1798
"The question whether one generation has the right to bind
another by the deficit it imposes is a question of such
fundamental importance as to place it among the fundamental
principles of government. We should consider ourselves
unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally
bound to pay them ourselves. . . "
Thomas Jefferson
". . . As a very important source of strength and security,
cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use
it as sparingly as possible. . . . not ungenerously throwing
upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."
George Washington
Farewell Address
September 19, 1796
". . . an adequate provision for the support of the public
credit is a matter of high importance to the national honor
and prosperity."
George Washington
To the House of Representatives
January 8, 1790
"The basis of our political system is the right of the people
to make and to alter their constitutions of government."
George Washington
Farewell Address
September, 1796
"I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse,
and in a Republican Government a greater curse than in any
other."
James Madison
To Henry Lee
April 13, 1790
"I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is
a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic;
inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the
administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the
liberties of the country."
Andrew Jackson
To Dr. L.H. Colman
April 26, 1824
"It is against sound policy and the genious of our
institutions that a public debt should be permitted to exist
a day longer than the means of the Treasury will enable the
Government to pay it off."
James K. Polk
Message to Congress
July 6, 1848
"We should look at the national debt just as it is - not as a
national blessing, but as a heavy burden on the industry of
the country, to be discharged without necessary delay."
Andrew Johnson
First Annual Message to Congress
December 4, 1865
"The result of economic dissipation to a nation is always
moral decay."
Calvin Coolidge
Inaugural Address
March 4, 1925
"Any government, like any family, can for a year spend a
little more than it earns. But you and I know that a
continuance of that habit means the poorhouse."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Radio Speech
July 30, 1932
"Balancing the budget will always remain a goal of any
administration that believes as much as we do that the
soundness of our money must be assured, and that an unbalanced
budget has a very bad effect on it."
President Eisenhower
October 1953 News Conference