BUDGET MAKING IN A DEMOCRACY CHAPTER I THE BUDGET AND ECONOMY NATIONAL bankruptcy, state bankruptcy and municipal bankruptcy are declared to be the inevitable end toward which we are drifting in our appropriations of public money. The method by which this result will come has been aptly called "government by deficit," that is, we spend money for governmental purposes far in excess of our willingness to impose taxes and bonds are the convenient cloak for doing this. More particularly it is pointed out that our methods of financing government in this country are slip-shod, careless, devoid of system or plan; that they are conducive to graft, and leaks. It was said in the United States Senate that the United States government could be run at a saving of three hundred million dollars a year not less efficiently but more efficiently — and the jaded sense of a "billion dollar country" accepted the statement without very much of a ripple of public opinion and it is often repeated quite unemotionally. 1 The discussion throughout this book applies to the normal conditions of peace times. I |