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The question of finances, for one thing, was always with him, particularly during his first years, when deficits were regularly reported and as regularly taken care of by special appropriations of the Legislature.
In facing all these problems wages, prices, production, tax rates, fiscal policy, deficits everywhere we remain constantly mindful that the time for sacrifice has not ended. But we are concerned with the encouragement of competitive enterprise and individual initiative precisely because we know them to be our Nation's abiding sources of strength.
The program for social security now pending before the Congress is a necessary part of the future unemployment policy of the government. While our present and projected expenditures for work relief are wholly within the reasonable limits of our national credit resources, it is obvious that we cannot continue to create governmental deficits for that purpose year after year.
For the six preceding years we had only deficits, the aggregate of which from 1894 to 1899, inclusive, amounted to $283,022,991.14. The receipts for the year from all sources, exclusive of postal revenues, aggregated $567,240,851.89, and expenditures for all purposes, except for the administration of the postal department, aggregated $487,713,791.71.
Another example of the imponderables that can make deficit projections highly questionable a change of only one percentage point in unemployment can alter a deficit up or down by some $25 billion. As it now stands, our forecast, which we're required by law to make, will show major deficits starting at less than a hundred billion dollars and declining, but still too high.
The grandeur of his views may be realised when it is remembered that he ordered this railway to be made of the same gauge as those of South Africa, because "it would save trouble in the end." As to the sudden fall in the price of cotton, his only expedient for making good the loss was to grow sugar on a great scale, but this was done so unwisely as to increase the deficits.
For the first time in 14 years, the Federal Government spent less in real terms last year than the year before. We took $73 billion off last year's deficit compared to the year before. The deficit itself has moved from 6.3 percent of the gross national product to only 3.4 percent. And perhaps the most important sign of progress has been the change in our view of deficits.
We believe that three principles must prevail if our policy is to succeed: First, the developing nations must give highest priority to food production, including the use of technology and the capital of private enterprise. Second, nations with food deficits must put more of their resources into voluntary family planning programs.
Parliament was called upon to appropriate L8,000,000 to defray the cost of the Afghan and Zulu wars. When Mr. Gladstone's government retired from office, there was a surplus of over L3,000,000, but the budgets of 1878 and 1879 both showed large deficits.
Well, I think the American people are tired of hearing the same old excuses. Together we made a commitment to balance the budget. Now let's keep it. As for those suggestions that the answer is higher taxes, the American people have repeatedly rejected that shop-worn advice. They know that we don't have deficits because people are taxed too little.
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