Wealth & Money Quote by John William McCormack

Budgeting, in McCormack's hands, isn’t a moral ledger; it’s a pressure system. The language is tellingly domestic and mechanical at once: “enough money in there for nine or ten months” frames governance like a household trying to get through the year, while “safety valve” admits the real fear is political blowback, not abstract fiscal purity. He’s describing a governing posture built around reassurance: keep the machine running, keep the public calm, keep members of Congress from panicking.

The “they” doing the worrying are both insiders and outsiders - agencies, legislators, interest groups - anyone with a stake in federal spending. McCormack’s promise is strategic ambiguity: you won’t get “all they want,” but you’ll get “a large piece.” It’s compromise sold as stability. Supplemental appropriations become the quiet escape hatch that lets Congress pass an initial bill that looks restrained, then revisit it when reality, or lobbying, reasserts itself. The subtext is blunt: the first number is rarely the last number, and everyone in the room understands that.

Context matters here: McCormack came up in an era when Congress openly managed the federal state’s expansion through committee power and procedural levers. Supplemental funding isn’t portrayed as an exception or a failure of planning; it’s normalized as a tool of control. The intent is less about thrift than about governing without crisis: ration anxiety, not just dollars, and you can keep the whole enterprise politically sustainable.