The Founding Fathers weren’t perfect but they sure knew the dangers of too much government debt. We don’t have to bring Thomas Jefferson back from the dead to get his views on it — we already know:
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” ~ Letter to John Taylor, 1816
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“The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.” ~ Letter to Samuel Kerchival, 1816
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“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.” ~ Letter to Spencer Roane, 1821
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“It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, ‘never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.'” ~ Letter to John Wayles Eppes, 1813
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“But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.” ~ Letter to James Madison, 1789
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“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared . . . To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with public debt . . . we must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude . . . If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements . . . If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.”
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“We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves.”
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“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.”
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