Robert Peel Quotes
Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?
2nd Baronet Peel
Robert Peel, 1788-1850, British Prime Minister (Tory), Statement on the budget, 1841
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
After the Stock Market crash of 1929, Republican politicians promised "recovery is right around the corner." But La Guardia disagreed:
The Dutch King’s brother, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte Bonaparte, insisted on Dutch contributions to his war effort in the way of Dutch troops, ships and provisions. Yet there was not enough possible revenue to pay for such a war effort.
Although the Professor was often right about this technique, at the time he made this statement, the Clinton administration was actually cutting spending and using much of the revenue to pay for the deficit—just the opposite of what the Professor was worried about. It was successful and the deficit was eliminated and surpluses were projected. However the succeeding administration more closely followed the professor’s pattern and increased spending enormously for serious needs, but also cut taxes, so that we went during the Bush administration from the largest projected surplus in American history to the greatest deficit in American history.
In 1964 the treasury secretary asked the president how to sell the proposed budget to Congress:
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.
He was referring to making the idea of federal deficits emotionally negative.
This position angered the extreme conservatives and the extreme liberals who both opposed him in 2012. However, the majority of the state supported him and he was elected on this middle of the road platform with most of the activists against him.
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, FRS was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) and twice Home Secretary (1822–1827 and 1828–1830). He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Peel was one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.
