US Presidency
1932

The extension of Government expenditures beyond the minimum limit necessary to conduct the proper functions of the Government enslaves men to work for the Government. If we combine the whole governmental expenditures, national, State, and municipal, we will find that before the World Way each citizen worked, theoretically, twenty-five days out of each year for the Government. Today he works for the support of all forms of Government sixty-one days out of the year. No nation can conscript its citizens for this proportion of men's time without national impoverishment and destruction of their liberties. Our Nation can not do it without destruction to our whole conception of the American system. The Federal Government has been forced in this emergency to unusual expenditure, but in partial alleviation of these extraordinary and unusual expenditures the Republican Administration has made a successful effort to reduce the ordinary running expenses of the Government. Our opponents have persistently interfered with such policies.