If the Congress decides to accept this point of view, it will logically have to reduce the present functions or activities of government by one-third.  Not only will the Congress have to accept the responsibility for such reduction; but the Congress will have to determine which activities are to be reduced.

Certain expenditures we cannot possibly reduce at this session, such as the interest on the public debt.  A few million dollars saved here or there in the normal or in curtailed work of the old departments and commissions will make no great saving in the Federal budget.  Therefore, the Congress would have to reduce drastically some of certain large items, very large items, such as aids to agriculture and soil conservation, veterans’ pensions, flood control, highways, waterways and other public works, grants for social and health security, Civilian Conservation Corps activities, relief for the unemployed, or national defense itself.

The Congress alone has the power to do all this, as it is the appropriating branch of the government.

The other approach to the question of government spending takes the position that this Nation ought not to be and need not be only a sixty billion dollar nation; that at this moment it has the men and the resources sufficient to make it at least an eighty billion dollar nation.  This school of thought does not believe that it can become an eighty billion dollar nation in the near future if government cuts its operations by one-third.  It is convinced that if we were to try it, we would invite disaster—­and that we would not long remain even a sixty billion dollar nation.  There are many complicated factors with which we have to deal, but we have learned that it is unsafe to make abrupt reductions at any time in our net expenditure program.

By our common sense action of resuming government activities last spring, we have reversed a recession and started the new rising tide of prosperity and national income which we are now just beginning to enjoy.

If government activities are fully maintained, there is a good prospect of our becoming an eighty billion dollar country in a very short time.  With such a national income, present tax laws will yield enough each year to balance each year’s expenses.

It is my conviction that down in their hearts the American public—­industry, agriculture, finance—­want this Congress to do whatever needs to be done to raise our national income to eighty billion dollars a year.

Investing soundly must preclude spending wastefully.  To guard against opportunist appropriations, I have on several occasions addressed the Congress on the importance of permanent long-range planning.  I hope, therefore, that following my recommendation of last year, a permanent agency will be set up and authorized to report on the urgency and desirability of the various types of government investment.

Investment for prosperity can be made in a democracy.