Paul Ryan Quotes
Borrowing and spending is not the way to prosperity.
Ryan, Paul. The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America's Promise. U.S. House Committee on the Budget, 5 Apr. 2011.
Almost every major corporation that is growing must borrow money to finance the growth. There is a great temptation to do this continuously, as if all works out the borrowed money is paid back and the nation has grown. However, not every investment succeeds, and when they do, few nations will take the growth and save it for a future date when a national investment does not work out as well as hoped. Gradually national debt as a proportion of the economy gets larger and larger and it makes mew investments more and more difficult to succeed because of the higher rates of interest that must be paid. Every modern country must find a balance. Those that do not can have a financial disaster such as Greece in the early part of the 21st century.
This is a particularly interesting historical quotation. It shows that when FDR was first elected, he had a classic view of deficit spending. However, above all, Roosevelt was a pragmatist and not an ideologue. Faced with the Great Depression that was not getting much better, Roosevelt turned around, changed his mind and policy about deficits and embarked on the “pump priming” approach of injecting substantial Federal spending into the economy and accepting the deficits in order to improve the situation which had been stagnant. FDR’s new policy staved off total disaster, but few remember that his great success was a total reversal of his earlier views.
At the time there was a worldwide recession and although the United States economy was not in very good shape, it was better than the other democracies and those nations with better economies then were authoritarian governments where investors did not trust their currencies. As a result, many wealthy people and businesses throughout the world were willing to lend money to the United States as a safe haven.
Paul Davis Ryan is the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
