Wealth & Money Quote by Andrew Mellon

“Balanced” is doing the heavy lifting here, the way corporate branding does: it turns a political choice into a temperament. Mellon’s phrase frames tax cuts not as a transfer of power upward, but as housekeeping. “Common sense” seals the deal by implying only cranks would disagree. In a single line, he re-labels ideology as arithmetic.

The key move is “surplus revenues.” A surplus sounds like found money, a lucky overage that can be safely returned. But surpluses are policy artifacts: they reflect prior tax rates, spending decisions, and, often, postwar economic conditions. Mellon, a banker-turned-Treasury Secretary and avatar of early 20th-century corporate America, is selling a story in which government collects too much and prudently gives it back. The subtext is that the state’s legitimate role is limited, and any expanded public ambition is suspect unless it can be funded without touching the fortunes of those already thriving.

This language lands in an era when “scientific” management and business efficiency were becoming cultural ideals. “Program” suggests technocratic neutrality, as if tax policy were a well-tuned machine rather than a moral argument about who pays for what. It’s also a preemptive strike against critics who would rather invest surpluses in infrastructure, labor protections, or social welfare: why “waste” extra cash when you can “lower taxes”?

Mellon’s intent is persuasion through inevitability. If tax cuts come from “surplus,” they’re framed as consequence-free. That’s the quiet trick: treating distributional politics as mere common sense.