Back in the day, after President Harding died in office on August 2, 1923, we Yanks got a couple of chaps in government that you don't see nowadays.
There was President Coolidge, weaned on a pickle according to Alice Longworth Roosevelt. What with the new budget law and all, Coolidge set to work with his budget director, Gen. Lord, to cut the federal budget. His notion was to get it down to $3 billion a year, but as you can see, he never got there.
The reason is that as soon as President Coolidge announced, in the summer of 1927, that he was not going to run again, it was Katy bar the door as congress-critters all converged to Spend More Money, particularly on dams and flood relief.
The other chappie in charge of the nation's finances in those days was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and he believed in "scientific taxation." From our point of view, this might be considered to be nothing more than cutting tax rates, particularly high surtax rates on high incomes. So, with President Coolidge helping, particularly on the spending front, cut is what Mellon did. Here is what happened.
You can see what happened. Despite the swingeing tax rate cuts, tax revenue actually went up by FY 1927. Imagine that. So what happened to the Deficit? Here is what happened.
Golly. Imagine. Surpluses of up to a billion dollars in an age when federal spending was in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.
Well, it was all over pretty soon. Because all those surpluses infected everyone with itchy palms. For you don't get elected to watch the national debt shrink. You get elected to make the good times roll, baby.
And so the feds got into flood control -- after monstrous floods on the Mississippi -- and good old dam building. Hence the Hoover Dam on the Colorado.
The point is, it doesn't matter what the money is spent on. In our era the mania is to spend money on bullet trains and light rail. Oh, and wonderful wind farms. But spend we must.
I guess the point is that Pharaohs, ever since the days of the pyramids, have just loved spending money on gigantic monuments.
But I rather like the government style of the Mellons and the Coolidges. To just sit there and cut spending and taxes. Whatever the beautiful people say.
There was President Coolidge, weaned on a pickle according to Alice Longworth Roosevelt. What with the new budget law and all, Coolidge set to work with his budget director, Gen. Lord, to cut the federal budget. His notion was to get it down to $3 billion a year, but as you can see, he never got there.
The reason is that as soon as President Coolidge announced, in the summer of 1927, that he was not going to run again, it was Katy bar the door as congress-critters all converged to Spend More Money, particularly on dams and flood relief.
The other chappie in charge of the nation's finances in those days was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and he believed in "scientific taxation." From our point of view, this might be considered to be nothing more than cutting tax rates, particularly high surtax rates on high incomes. So, with President Coolidge helping, particularly on the spending front, cut is what Mellon did. Here is what happened.
You can see what happened. Despite the swingeing tax rate cuts, tax revenue actually went up by FY 1927. Imagine that. So what happened to the Deficit? Here is what happened.
Golly. Imagine. Surpluses of up to a billion dollars in an age when federal spending was in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.
Well, it was all over pretty soon. Because all those surpluses infected everyone with itchy palms. For you don't get elected to watch the national debt shrink. You get elected to make the good times roll, baby.
And so the feds got into flood control -- after monstrous floods on the Mississippi -- and good old dam building. Hence the Hoover Dam on the Colorado.
The point is, it doesn't matter what the money is spent on. In our era the mania is to spend money on bullet trains and light rail. Oh, and wonderful wind farms. But spend we must.
I guess the point is that Pharaohs, ever since the days of the pyramids, have just loved spending money on gigantic monuments.
But I rather like the government style of the Mellons and the Coolidges. To just sit there and cut spending and taxes. Whatever the beautiful people say.
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