In this connection, I should mention our enormous national debt. We must begin to make some payments on it if we are to avoid passing on to our children an impossible burden of debt.

This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It's our declaration of economic independence. ...now it's our turn to prosper and in so doing use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt and it will all happen very quickly. With today's action we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before.

The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom, and the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal. They've taken advantage of us for many, many years. For many years we've been at the wrong side of the ball. And I'll tell you what, I think it's going to be unbelievable.

One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.

Income was wisely chosen as the measure of benefits and of ability to pay. This was, and still is, a wholesome guide for national policy.