At the most basic level, a central bank must be clear and open about its actions and operations, particularly when they involve the deployment of public funds.
The Executive is charged officially in the Departments under it with the disbursement of the public money, and is responsible for the faithful application of it to the purposes for which it is raised. The Legislature is the watchful guardian over the public purse. It is its duty to see that the disbursement has been honestly made.
I have spent my career trying to get Congressmen to spend the people's money as if it were their own. But I have failed.
A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.
Someone must stand up to those who say, "Here's the key, there's the Treasury, just take as many of those hard-earned tax dollars as you want."
People are not really interested in what politicians talk about, but what they are really interested in is how their hard-earned tax money is spent.
This stuff they are talking here in Congress costs the people of the United States $44 a page. That's beside what it costs to ship it to the asylums where it's read.
People'd be like, "Oh, spending taxpayer money." It's like, "No, no, I actually I'm paying for all of this. The only thing I don't pay for is Secret Service and an airplane."
I think Australians are more interested in what I am doing with their money than what I am doing with my own.
We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic either of an undeveloped people, or of a decadent civilization. America is neither.
