Coolidge cut the budget, and ...

Coolidge cut the budget, and even better, cut it during peace and prosperity. He left a federal budget lower than the one that greeted him when he arrived in office. He managed to freeze or cut the budget over more than five years in office. If you look at charts of presidents - Nixon, Ike, and Reagan - you see them failing on this score.
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 Amity Shlaes

Quotes from the same author

Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
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 Amity Shlaes
Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency.
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 Amity Shlaes
With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.
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 Amity Shlaes
The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.
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 Amity Shlaes
We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.
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 Amity Shlaes