Thomas Jefferson Quotes
It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith."
Jefferson, Thomas. "To John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813." The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 6, 11 March to 27 November 1813, edited by J. Jefferson Looney, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 223.
Commenting on the practice of making loans to repay old loans:
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.
Historically, this is the occasion where the war debt from the Revolution and the War of 1812 was paid off. It was one of the few times that the nation was debt free.
At the time, many conservatives were threatening not to increase the debt ceiling unless they could get their way on the budget negotiations which would come up later. The Congress had earlier actually committed to spend the amounts when they voted the appropriations that enabled the spending and increasing the debt. Most countries do not have this second stage in that there is nothing the Congress can possibly do to change get back the money that they already voted to be spent, and the process of raising the debt ceiling must be done else the “full faith and credit” of the United States.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
