Fiscal Policy Quotes
See {583710} for his grandchild’s variation.
See {617208} his grandfather’s related statement.
March 4, 1933 was the date that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had assumed the Presidency from Herbert Hoover and used government to combat the Great Depression whereas Hoover would not take any of these steps as the conservative wing of his party and he regarded anything that government did was “creeping socialism”. Historically, it is useful to recall what steps Roosevelt took that were described as socialism. These include Social Security, Federal Deposit Insurance for bank accounts, aid to farmers, the Civilian Conservation Corps, Regulation of the stock market, regulation of banks and many other things that are key elements of modern capitalism which virtually every capitalistic nations has in one form or another. Long after Truman was out of office, the most conservative elements of the Republican Party have accused every Democratic President of “creeping socialism” when they were actually quite opposed to socialism. Even when their career before their presidency was full of criticisms of socialism and policies that are opposite, as in the case of President Obama, the President has been accused of being a socialist. However, it started with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S Truman.
One economic view of economic development is that the government should invest in education, scientific research, and infrastructure which will produce and stimulate economic growth. The contrary is that taxation takes capital out of the private sector that is needed for investment to produce economic growth. Both sides are correct. In the United States for example three of the greatest economic stimulants were the building of the Railroads, the National Highway System, and the Internet all developed in large part with taxpayer dollars. At the same time taxes do diminish the amount of private capital available for the economy. These are tradeoff decisions like most things in economics.
The phrase is carved above the entrance to the IRS Headquarters in Washington DC
The very act of printing money created a debt—at the time and until the Nixon Administration which went off the gold standard—the government owed the gold or silver and the spicie—the printed money—was a promissory note.
The Congressman was notorious for his extreme and unusual views of things. See {606976} for another of his extreme statements which turned out to be untrue. McFadden quotations are sometimes used to show that there is almost no limit to how absurd a view a politician in general, or a member of Congress in particular, might take and make public.
