Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics.
3.28.2006
FDR Quotes:
I stumbled across a website full of FDR Quotes - here are some great ones:
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Fox News' anchor Britt Hume is quoted as misquoting FDR thusly:
"In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, “ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
In fact, according to James Roosevelt and the actual archival record, here is what FDR said:
"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
FDR was proposing three separate and distinct programs:
1. A temporary "old-age pension" for seniors who wouldn’t have time to pay into the "new" Social Security system;
2. A compulsory-contribution annuity--meaning, Social Security as we know it today--which would become a "self-supporting system" (i.e., contributions of workers would support retirees initially, but ultimately the imputed interest on the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund would pay the benefits so that ultimately, the initial, start-up old-age pensions (item 1, above) would be supplanted by the self-supporting annuities from the earnings of the Trust Fund - meaning, Social Security.) and,
3. Voluntary private accounts. These are the "Add On" (not "carve out") private accounts - like IRA's. 401(k), and Keough's proposed by Pete Peterson, President Clinton, and Senator Moynihan.
Fox News' Britt Hume turned this completely on its head. He pulls two unrelated snippets out of the FDR quote, and adds the phrase "government funding" between them.
Media Matters concluded that because the misquote and rewrite was so artfully crafted, it was deliberate and dishonest. it’s clear that it’s deliberate.
Al Franken says that it is a particularly nasty form of dishonesty because it is manipulating Americans’ trust of FDR in order to build support for dismantling FDR’s legacy.
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