Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
One of these is economy in government expenditures. The duty of economy is
not debatable. It is manifest and imperative. In the appropriations we pass
we are spending the money of the great people whose servants we are,-not
our own. We are trustees and responsible stewards in the spending. The only
thing debatable and upon which we should be careful to make our thought and
purpose clear is the kind of economy demanded of us. I assert with the
greatest confidence that the people of the United States are not jealous of
the amount their Government costs if they are sure that they get what they
need and desire for the outlay, that the money is being spent for objects
of which they approve, and that it is being applied with good business
sense and management.
Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and in the means by which
those tasks are to be performed, and very few Governments are organized, I
venture to say, as wise and experienced business men would organize them if
they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon. Certainly the Government of
the United States is not. I think that it is generally agreed that there
should be a systematic reorganization and reassembling of its parts so as
to secure greater efficiency and effect considerable savings in expense.
But the amount of money saved in that way would, I believe, though no doubt
considerable in itself, running, it may be, into the millions, be
relatively small,-small, I mean, in proportion to the total necessary
outlays of the Government. It would be thoroughly worth effecting, as every
saving would, great or small. Our duty is not altered by the scale of the
saving. But my point is that the people of the United States do not wish to
curtail the activities of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge
them; and with every enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed, of the
country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of
expense. The sort of economy we ought to practice may be effected, and
ought to be effected, by a careful study and assessment of the tasks to be
performed; and the money spent ought to be made to yield the best possible
returns in efficiency and achievement. And, like good stewards, we should
so account for every dollar of our appropriations as to make it perfectly
evident what it was spent for and in what way it was spent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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