Another President like Coolidge is needed

Editor,

Calvin Coolidge became President of the United States in 1923 following the untimely death of President Harding and served through 1929.

He had previously served as Governor of Massachusetts and was dedicated to budgeting and lower taxes. He stuck as religiously to the national budget during his tenure as he did to his own personal one and insisted that his cabinet members do likewise. He met weekly with his budget director and anticipated requests that he might encounter before each cabinet meeting. He stated that it was more important to stop bad bills than it was to pass good ones. He felt that it was not a legitimate function of the national government to intervene in natural disasters even when one occurred in the state of Vermont where he had spent his childhood. He judiciously used the pocket veto in which he never signed bills which then might be overridden by the Congress but let them die of inaction. Thus special interest legislative bills could not be used as campaign reasons for a legislator’s reelection. He was also convinced that tax reductions resulted in increased revenue to the National Treasury. Of further interest he named the lion cubs sent to him by the Mayor of Johannesburg “Budget Bureau” and “Tax Reduction.”

Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to have a President who stayed in Washington attempting to solve the nation’s fiscal problems rather than use Air Force “1” for daily campaigning rather than taking expensive vacations at taxpayer’s expense or golf matches with Tiger Woods?

Let us hope that there is another President in the offing who might be so dedicated. And who would not have to rely on teleprompters for address to the public?

Carl Cornelius,

Sidney