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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Bruce Barton (1886–1957)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 379
AUTHOR: Bruce Barton (1886–1957)
QUOTATION: In his first years in the White House, Mr. Roosevelt apologized for each annual deficit. Each new budget message explained that, because of unforeseen circumstances, the promise of the previous year had not been met, but next year things would be better; next year there would be a balanced budget…. The 1938 congressional elections were uncomfortably near at hand…. it was announced that the President would deliver a Fireside Chat. In it our startled ears caught the opening accents of a grand new liturgy. Spending would be resumed, but let not the heart be troubled. Spending was no longer the rock of unsound finance on which so many liberal governments had been wrecked; it was not danger, but security. Debt, if owed to ourselves, was not debt but investment.
ATTRIBUTION: BRUCE BARTON, “A Businessman’s Doubts on Government Spending,” Fortune, February 1943, p. 136.
SUBJECTS: Debt