Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
809
AUTHOR:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)
QUOTATION:
If the Nation is living within its income, its credit is good. If, in some crises, it lives beyond its income for a year or two, it can usually borrow temporarily at reasonable rates. But if, like a spendthrift, it throws discretion to the winds, and is willing to make no sacrifice at all in spending; if it extends its taxing to the limit of the people’s power to pay and continues to pile up deficits, then it is on the road to bankruptcy.
ATTRIBUTION:
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, governor of New York, campaign address on the federal budget, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 19, 1932.—The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1928–1932, p. 797 (1938).
