Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
one hundred and twelve millions. The obvious moral of the figures is that
it is a plain counsel of prudence to continue all of the present taxes or
their equivalents, and confine ourselves to the problem of providing one
hundred and twelve millions of new revenue rather than two hundred and
ninety-seven millions.
How shall we obtain the new revenue? We are frequently reminded that there
are many millions of bonds which the Treasury is authorized under existing
law to sell to reimburse the sums paid out of current revenues for the
construction of the Panama Canal; and it is true that bonds to the amount
of approximately $222,000,000 are now available for that purpose. Prior to
1913, $134,631,980 of these bonds had actually been sold to recoup the
expenditures at the Isthmus; and now constitute a considerable item of the
public debt. But I, for one, do not believe that the people of this country
approve of postponing the payment of their bills. Borrowing money is
short-sighted finance. It can be justified only when permanent things are
to be accomplished which many generations will certainly benefit by and
which it seems hardly fair that a single generation should pay for. The
objects we are now proposing to spend money for cannot be so classified,
except in the sense that everything wisely done may be said to be done in
the interest of posterity as well as in our own. It seems to me a clear
dictate of prudent statesmanship and frank finance that in what we are now,
I hope, about to undertake we should pay as we go. The people of the
country are entitled to know just what burdens of taxation they are to
carry, and to know from the outset, now. The new bills should be paid by
internal taxation.
To what sources, then, shall we turn? This is so peculiarly a question
which the gentlemen of the House of Representatives are expected under the
Constitution to propose an answer to that you will hardly expect me to do
more than discuss it in very general terms. We should be following an
almost universal example of modern governments if we were to draw the
greater part or even the whole of the revenues we need from the income
taxes. By somewhat lowering the present limits of exemption and the figure
at which the surtax shall begin to be imposed, and by increasing, step by
step throughout the present graduation, the surtax itself, the income taxes
as at present apportioned would yield sums sufficient to balance the books
of the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year 1917 without anywhere making
the burden unreasonably or oppressively heavy. The precise reckonings are
fully and accurately set out in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury
which will be immediately laid before you.
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