To avoid the necessity of a permanent debt and its inevitable consequences, I have advocated and endeavored to carry into effect the policy of confining the appropriations for the public service to such objects only as are clearly with the constitutional authority of the Federal Government.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of fiscal responsibility and constitutional authority in government spending.
Martin Van Buren's quote addresses the necessity of avoiding long-term debt by ensuring that government appropriations are limited to expenditures that fall clearly within the constitutional framework. He advocates for a disciplined approach to financial management within public service, highlighting the risks associated with excess borrowing and the importance of adhering to legal guidelines in governance.
In practice
During a speech on fiscal policy to a group of financial analysts.
In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the creation of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be performed without such a resort.
It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.
The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity.
Those who have wrought great changes in the world never succeeded by gaining over chiefs; but always by exciting the multitude. The first is the resource of intrigue and produces only secondary results, the second is the resort of genius and transforms the universe.
I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not found on the executive calendar of any country.
The government should not be guided by Temporary Excitement, but by Sober Second Thought.
It is urgent to prevent new U.S. aggression. The time is now for the world to say 'no' to U.S. threats of air attack against Iran, and to the very notion of a nuclear first-use 'option' by America or any other nation.
I am not running for mayor yet. But if it comes to be true that people cannot voice an opinion unless they have been elected, then we are no longer in a democracy.
Politics is a rough and tumble business, and yet there seems to be an effort by the commentariat to sanitise American politics to some type of high-level Victorian debating society.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
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