Politics & Power Quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Roosevelt turns the budget debate on its head by tracing deficits not to social programs or peacetime governance but to the long, expensive shadow of war. The years he names span the end of World War I through the Great Depression and the first steps toward rearmament. During that period, the federal ledger was dominated by bills that war leaves behind: interest and principal on Liberty Bond debt, pensions and medical care for veterans, and the politically charged veterans bonus that Congress paid in 1936 over his veto. Those are the payments for past wars. The bills for present wars, in a country that was not formally fighting, point to the continuous costs of maintaining a standing military and the policing of imperial legacies, from bases to readiness, that do not vanish when the guns fall silent. And the payments for future wars capture the capital outlays of preparedness, such as naval expansion laws in the mid-1930s, munitions plant subsidies, and stockpiles needed for contingencies that many Americans hoped never to face.

The statistic carries a political purpose. Facing critics who accused the New Deal of blowing up the budget, Roosevelt argues that social insurance and relief were not the primary drivers of red ink; militarism and its aftermath were. It is a fiscal version of his broader moral message that peace is not only humane but cheaper. He also warns about the inertia of war costs: once incurred, they bind future budgets for decades, narrowing choices long after the victory parades.

There is an irony in hindsight, since he would soon preside over the greatest military mobilization in U.S. history. Yet the observation remains a lesson in budget structure. Deficits often reflect commitments embedded in the past and anticipated in the future, not merely a current-year policy choice. By naming war as the engine of those obligations, he asks the public to weigh the true price of security against the social investments that are frequently blamed.