US Presidency
1924

I do not profess that we can secure an era of perfection in human existence, but we can provide an era of peace and prosperity, attended with freedom and justice and made more and more satisfying by the ministrations of the charities and humanities of life. Our domestic problems are for the most part economic. We have our enormous debt to pay, and we are paying it. We have the high cost of government to diminish, and we are diminishing it. We have a heavy burden of taxation to reduce, and we are reducing it. But while remarkable progress has been made in these directions, the work is yet far from accomplished. We still owe over $ 21,000,000,000, the cost of the National Government is still about $ 3,500,000,000, and the national taxes still amount to about $ 27 for each one of our inhabitants. There yet exists this enormous field for the application of economy.