Politics & Power Quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Roosevelt frames the deficit not as a bookkeeping lapse but as a moral invoice: the nation keeps spending tomorrow’s money to pay for yesterday’s violence and today’s anxieties. The phrasing "Don't forget" is doing political work. It’s a finger on the scale of public memory, aimed at voters and lawmakers who treat deficits as a domestic failure (waste, idleness, government bloat) rather than a predictable consequence of militarism. He’s not merely citing a statistic; he’s disciplining the terms of the argument.

The time window matters. 1921 to 1939 spans post-World War I debt, the interwar arms posture, and the Great Depression years when austerity hawks blamed social spending for fiscal strain. By insisting that "over ninety percent" of deficits come from "payments for past, present, and future wars", Roosevelt collapses timelines: war costs don’t end when treaties are signed. They compound through pensions, interest on borrowed money, preparedness programs, and the permanent infrastructure of defense. "Future wars" is the sharpest blade here, implying that even peace is taxed by fear.

The subtext is classic FDR: defend the New Deal by relocating fiscal guilt. If deficits are the charge sheet, he wants the public to see the largest line item as militarized policy, not relief checks. It’s also a warning, delivered before full wartime mobilization: if America chooses the path of war, it should do so without pretending it’s financially clean.