Instituted to measure the success or shortfall of the Budget system year by year, the Business Organization of the Government met twice annually, once in January and at the end of the fiscal year each June. Led by the President and his Budget Bureau Director, it would be left to Coolidge and Director Lord to lift these meetings out of the realm of a burdensome and tedious anomaly from the status quo. Instead of “business as usual” the Coolidge administration walked what it talked, bringing a focused and even entertainingly competitive application of private sector principles to what had been a wasteful and inefficient government norm. As everyone knew, however, when the department heads, bureau chiefs and agency leads met with the President and the Budget Bureau Director for the tenth time on January 30, 1926, the progress of four and a half years could come stall, abruptly halt or unravel before their eyes if any one of them succumbed to the pressures continually upon them to revert to the old habits of Washington as usual. Now elected in his own right, there was no code of honor binding Coolidge to adhere to Harding’s budget program. He continued it because it was morally right and necessary for the country, whoever occupied the White House. Each month was making it more and more difficult, however, for those who made his budgets reality every year. Prosperity was abounding. The economy was roaring and revenue had only increased with the expectations of a new tax bill, which would be passed less than a month after their meeting on February 26th, drastically improving conditions from what had already been beneficial relief under the Revenue Act two years before.

A student of government and especially of tax policy, President Coolidge, began to see a pattern of both good prospects and detrimental concerns for the future. The meeting later that year, on June 21, would make it even clearer: government expenses were reaching a natural plateau, that made future possibilities for drastic cutting genuinely no longer possible. By that summer, Coolidge reminded his audience again that the past five years under a Budget system had removed $2 billion of waste from the Federal budget not once or twice, but five times. However, the Federal Budget, chopped from $5.5 billion in 1921, now stood at some $3 billion but was very close to reaching an impasse. Progress would begin undoing itself to the harm of every American household. The standards of living would begin to fall under disrepair and the cost of government would have to return to extracting the earnings of the people who would again work less for themselves and more for government. To Coolidge this was an intolerable regression. Coolidge made emphatically clear that this program was not about saving a dollar if it meant destroying an individual. Each partner in this great enterprise was saving to serve people, not money. Closing schools, abolishing courts, disbanding the police forces and discontinuing fire departments was not moving in the direction of civilization but back toward anarchy and the law of might triumphs over all.

This did not mean that the Budget system had completed its work or that constructive economy was done. Far from it. Now came the most difficult juncture: Would constructive economy, what Coolidge termed the securing of more results for less cost — the people getting the most possible out of every tax dollar, continue? After all, he approached the question not with a concern for where government was going to find reliable streams of revenue but how every cent of revenue could be saved and only expended to maximum benefit of those who worked to earn it, American taxpayers. As Coolidge declared in the June meeting of 1926, “The real purpose for which we are assembled is to discuss plans and adopt policies which will affect in their actual daily life the welfare, progress, and prosperity of 117,000,000 people. What we do here reaches into every home in the land. It determines whether the taxgatherer is going to require more money from the head of the household to meet the cost of maintaining the Government, or whether the taxgatherer is going to leave more money with the head of the household to meet the cost of maintaining the family. Our efforts here are translated into benefits for the head of the household and his family.”

These bi-annual meetings were anything but irrelevant abstractions, they directly impacted the lives of every person in the country. There were faces tied to every decision made in Washington. A choice to stop now and abandon constructive economy — however insignificant it seemed to each little office in government meant priceless blessings to the future good of families all across the country. Coolidge wanted to remind those who had partnered with his effort to budget that millions of real people waited at the end of their determination to uphold their obligation.

It was just as important to recognize that constructive economy was not simply an incessant negative, it sometimes called for reallocations of spending on new endeavors in order to secure even greater efficiency with the people’s money. The construction of public buildings, vacating the expensive rental of private property, would ensure that more was gained for less as property taxes would decrease and rental costs could be eliminated. Personnel, what everyone knew to be the biggest expenditure in the budget, had seen 5,000 names (roughly 1% of the total Federal workforce) at a cost of $8 million reduced from the payroll. These numbers were people to Coolidge who, he knew, would find the real value of their labor in the burgeoning marketplace without weighing down the American people at exaggerated prices from the public Treasury. Of course, when possible, efficiency meant moving one person unneeded in one department to where they were in need. Or, as Coolidge said in June, “I am encouraged in the thought that we can have further reduction of personnel without discharging a single person by the simple device of not filling all the vacancies that occur.”

The call of constructive economy summoned everyone to serve the taxpayer, from the newest clerk to the most senior administrator. Government work was not “good enough” to do less than any private business must do to meet the constant challenge of efficiency and solvency. This included travel costs and per diem rates. Government employees were not free to spend because it was there. The surplus of 1926 was no excuse to waste the money of the American people. “We are not striving to save the dollar simply to save it,” Coolidge declared. “We are not striving to save the dollar at the expense of the public service. Rather do we approach it from the other side and save the dollar for the good that it will bring to the people whom we serve. We can make the dollar purchase more by purchasing more wisely. We can eventually save money by a justified expenditure to-day which will reduce future annual unproductive expenditures. This is constructive economy.”

The Revenue Act that would be passed in February 1926 finally achieved a number of the objections Coolidge had wanted done in 1924. Top marginal income rates were sliced to 25%, a 21% decrease from 1924. The new Act “relieved some 2,000,000 people from paying any direct tax and reduced the burden of all other taxpayers. General prosperity is the aggregate of the individual prosperity of our citizens. To permit the people to retain more of their own earnings is to increase their savings and purchasing capacity, which assures prosperity.” In 1926, married couples with no dependents, making the typical middle class bracket of $3,000 net, paid nothing. Single persons making $3,000 paid only $16.88. The laundry list of taxes invented during the war had governed some 50 categories of goods, now there were only 5. This meant a loss of $275 million in revenue and under the law “no compensating increases” were levied to replace them. Under the previous tax law, upwards of 40% of America’s businesses “with not one dollar of profit were obliged to pay a large tax.” In 1926, this ended so that businesses could make payroll, cover costs and barely break even without having to face a tax penalty for profits they did not make. Another provision withdrew individual income tax records from public disclosure requirements thereby helping to protect taxpayers from being targeted by those who deemed income or what someone else paid to be “unfair.” The rewards of this Act would continue to come to light in the coming year but it already confirmed the “theory that reduction of tax rates economically applied will stimulate business, and thereby increase taxable revenue.” Holding to the Budget system would ensure that the people obtained a maximum return on their investment.

Another cause of concern for Coolidge came from the budget estimates of the next two years, which held razor thin surpluses that could very easily evaporate should even the slightest unforeseen expense arise. It was evident that while revenue was increasing, several factors were going to begin undermining the success of future tax cuts if relied upon recklessly. First, President Coolidge was concerned that a reliance on the current sources of revenue to increase steadily was a misleading and faulty hope. The back taxes that had accrued so much of the increase in 1925 and 1926 were going away. There would not be another year of so ample a contribution to the surplus. The departments could not depend on this revenue in their appropriation requests to the President like they had in previous years. Constructive economy meant “preparation for the future.” If costs were wisely planned out, retrenchment would continue as it had the previous year, saving $24 million in reserve when all was said and done. This conscientious discipline of spending less than one had would only reap greater dividends for the future.

Second, President Coolidge was concerned that loose spending would foreclose any possibility of further tax reduction in the coming years. Tax rates had been cut three times by the summer of 1926, and the latest Revenue Act had secured much for the country that would only increase as the new year dawned. Yet, the President knew that government was even then taking too much from people’s earnings so that Americans were all the poorer for it. If those gathered to effect constructive economy deviated from that mission, surplus would soon melt into deficit, the budget would be overwhelmed with demands from every side and prosperity would be inundated with financial distress resulting in “want, misery, disorder, and the dissolution of society.” As he would repeat again in June, “The limit is close at hand when further expansion in the costs of government will bring the danger of stagnation and financial depression.” Little could anyone know how prescient this statement would be when, by 1930, market downturn would become depression through that very cause. Coolidge’s warnings were not political hyperbole either, the men and women gathered for the Business Organization of the Government had seen these dangers manifest firsthand from 1919 through the turmoil of 1921. While part of the increase in revenue from the Revenue Act of 1926 would come from business expecting reductions, it would not help anyone to infer more tax cuts were to be expected in the future. Doing so too soon would have the reverse effect of precluding cuts as government would become lackadaisical about responsible budgeting.

Third, President Coolidge was concerned with state and local spending trends. While the Federal Government had faithfully maintained the cutting of expenditures with an accompanying reduction in debts and taxes, States and municipalities around the country embraced a “mounting tide of expenditure and indebtedness.” During the same five years that the Federal Government had brought expenses down more than $2 billion, $4 billion in increases were being expended by State, county and municipal authorities. When the cost of all government nationwide approached $9.5 billion in 1921, 60% of that total was Federal. In 1925, when the cost of all government stood at $11.5 billion, only 27% of the total fell to the Federal level. Coolidge explained the basis for this dramatic turn-around. “The answer to this reduction of 33 per cent in the Federal share of all government costs is not that we are performing less service for the people or neglecting our physical plant. The real answer is that we have so far put our house in order as to decrease our demands upon the people and to give them more efficient government at less cost…There is cause for concern in this situation. It is fraught with grave consequences to the public welfare. The Federal Government has decreased its cost by practicing the homely virtue of thrift. This has not been an easy task. It has required cooperative effort and sacrifice in every direction. If the interests of the people demanded this action on the part of the Federal Government, surely they would seem to demand similar action with regard to the increase in these other local governmental costs. This suggestion is not meant as a criticism of the officers of our local governments. It is rather a statement of fact. It shows how hard it is in these times to reduce the costs, taxes, and debts of governments. But it can be done if the people will cooperate.”

The people of the country had to remain behind these efforts of constructive economy just as much as the Congress, the President and his Executive Department. It was larger than any one person, one department or even one administration. Yet every individual, doing one’s part, was indispensable to the overall result. The President had relentlessly made the case for this effort every year for five years but without the experienced logic of Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, the creative leadership of Budget Director Lord, the tenacious legislative skill of Appropriations Chairmen, Representative Martin B. Madden in the House and Senator Francis E. Warren in the Senate, the intense accounting discipline of Comptroller General John R. McCarl, or the rugged perseverance of thousands of Federal employees, who made all these ideals reality, the Budget System would have failed and the country probably would never have experienced the historic prosperity of the 1920s. It was a test throughout the country of the “success of self-government.” By using money, not as the end result, but as any other “utility — to advance the welfare of the human race” through “a wise expenditure, well balanced and within the means of the people,” America would pass that test worthy of freedom.

“That is constructive economy,” Coolidge affirmed. “It does not partake of a mean and sordid nature; it is not narrow and selfish, but rather broad, generous, and ennobling, undertaking to deal justly with the whole situation by raising such revenues as the people can fairly bear to meet such expenditures are are fairly required…The result is America. Into the making of that result and its continued success your patriotic service and devotion is a contributing factor of enormous importance.” When all had been tallied, it meant something far more than “the saving of money.” It was a justification of our “wonderful American experiment for the advancement of human welfare.” After all, it “is not the only method by which we have built railroads, developed agriculture, created commerce, and established industry, not only the method by which we have made nearly 18 million automobiles and put a telephone and a radio into so large a proportion of our homes, but it is also the method by which we have founded schools, endowed hospitals, and erected places of religious worship. It is the material groundwork on which the whole fabric of society rests.” This meant so much more than material goods. “It has given to the average American a breadth of outlook, a variety of experience, and a richness of life that in former generations was entirely beyond the reach of even the most powerful princes.”

All the energy expended would be in vain were it not for “the keeping of our faith.” Our framework of popular government would implode at its very core if it throws “away self-restraint and self-control,” adopting economically unsound laws that squander this moral inheritance America is exemplifying to the world. “America has demonstrated that self-government can be administered as fairly to protect each individual in all his rights, whether they affect his person or his property. Under constitutional authority we tax everything, but we confiscate nothing. It is not through selfishness or wastefulness or arrogance, but through self-denial, conservation, and service that we shall build up the American spirit. This is the true constructive economy, the true faith on which our institutions rest.”

Two hundred and ten years ago today the death of Alexander Hamilton in a duel with Aaron Burr abruptly ended the life and public career of one of the most inflammatory and yet accomplished men of the Founding generation. Hamilton, one of Calvin Coolidge’s most respected figures, has appeared on America’s ten-dollar bill since July 10, 1929 in recognition of his preeminent role as the founder of our national system of finance. His legacy in cementing party politics is less known and even less appreciated. As history bears out, however, rough-and-tumble partisanship is anything but new to our time. Hamilton’s death demonstrates that, as polarizing as many today feel it is, what is happening now hardly compares to the days of Hamilton. Consider the imprisonment of opposition newspaper editors under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the resulting Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions arguing for state invalidation of Congressional acts. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, impeached and nearly removed from office for his unconcealed advocacy of Federalist causes, tested the very limits of partisanship and national integrity later in the same year Hamilton died. Consider the violent rhetoric of the 1800 election from James T. Callender’s scandalmongering pen and Philip Freneau’s National Gazette to Hamilton’s spirited campaign not only against Jefferson’s “womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment of Great Britain” but also the venom of The Porcupine’s Gazette against the Republican opposition. Jefferson’s “ho-mance,” as it might be termed today, with Revolutionary France would continue to express itself in unrestrained enthusiasm while Federalists were labeled as the actual “Reign of Terror.” Yet, as we know, America survived it all.

Partisanship and what many would consider incivility today have been with us since the founding. Consider the furious threats of the New England states to secede from the Union should Madison continue “his war” against Britain after 1812. Consider the road leading to 1861, from the Nullification Crisis of the Jackson administration to the bloodshed subsequent to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Consider, for instance, 1856 when Representative Preston Brooks, in defense of impugned honor, took a cane to Senator Charles Sumner’s head, beating him into unconsciousness on the Senate floor. Consider the imposition of strict, even malicious, means during Reconstruction in the 1860s and 70s, exacting vengeance, not justice, from the seceded states of the South. Consider the partisan upheaval of the 1890s, which pitted Democrats and Republicans in fierce lines of division over immigration, the gold standard and other public policy questions.

The 1920s were no exception to this rule. In Coolidge’s own time, elected officials mockingly read into the Congressional record absurd poems ridiculing the President’s use of a mechanical horse gifted to him. Missouri Democrat, James A. Reed, would make an industry of hurling insults and incendiary rhetoric during Cal’s administration just as California Republican Hiram Johnson would. James Cox, the Democrat candidate for President in 1920, lamented, “There is behind Senator Harding the Afro-American party…to stir up troubles among the Colored people upon the false claims that it can bring social equality, thereby subjecting the unsuspecting Colored people to the counterattacks of those fomenting racial prejudice.” The rhetoric of race-baiting and bigotry existed even in what too many mistakenly assume was some kind of “golden age of civility,” when parties worked together without name-calling or substantial disagreements on policy. Of course, we recall Dorothy Parker’s sarcastic response upon learning of Coolidge’s death in 1933, asking, “How could they tell?” The point, as Pietro S. Nivola of the Brookings Institution, reminds us, is that the “severity of today’s partisan discord pales in comparison with these epic clashes from the republic’s early years.” Truthful rhetoric had little restraint on this or any other heady era of partisan back-and-forth. Yet, the country survived each time.

Nivola further shows how partisanship, far from a cause for dismay to the Founders, serves a very beneficial purpose: It gives the electorate a choice. Voter participation rises when clear contrasts on principle are exemplified. As Nivola observes, greater turnout is hardly the sign of an unhealthy polity. Besides, bipartisanship has proven to be no sure safeguard at all for sound legislation, whether it be the Social Security Act of 1935, “hefty agriculture subsidies,” the “sacred cows” of energy lobbies or the Medicare law of 2003. In each case, the “benefits to taxpayers” remain dubious at best. Nivola recounts the findings of McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, who conclude that polarization is on the upswing but Nivola places this in historical perspective. It is no unprecedented or novel partisanship we are witnessing today.

Enter Calvin Coolidge. The defense of our dual-party framework is one of his most emphatic imprints on the development of political thought. To Cal, partisanship was not inherently harmful to the country. After all, he did say, “While an independent attitude on the part of the citizen is not without a certain public advantage, yet it is necessary under our form of government to have political parties. Unless some one is a partisan, no one can be an independent.” The voters of this country choose between two distinct sets of party principles. The platforms of each party must not simply mirror each other. The electorate is not served by attempting to “one-up” the other side. It must campaign on and then follow-through with its platform.

To Coolidge, principles must translate into effectual governance. “Unless those who are elected on the same party platform associate themselves together to carry out its provisions, the election becomes a mockery.” Channeling both Madison and Hamilton, Coolidge knew that party government is the expression of the electorate’s will. Supplanting actual revolution, a process of orderly and lawful change takes place through elections every two years. “But,” as President Coolidge declared during his Inaugural Address, “if there is to be responsible party government, the party label must be something more than a mere device for securing office.” It must continue as a vital force in governing. That means partisanship.

Coolidge had seen what a “narrow and bigoted” perversion of partisanship had inflicted on the nation under the Wilson administration. His vice-presidential opponent in 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had perfected it into an art form, criticizing Coolidge for his remarks about the “miasma” of Wilson’s militant and “unconstitutional” regime. As Cal surveyed the years of Democrat Party control, he spoke in Boston on September 18, 1920, saying, “The American people are turning from the contemplation of a mirage which, for a time, they mistook for a reality. When the political history of the past eight years is written it will resemble nothing so much as a chapter of accidents…The abounding prosperity of the Nation was turned to a state of adversity by breaking down the system of protection and by destroying the confidence of those engaged in all business enterprise. The cost of living was not lowered, but profitable employment, the only means wherewith the people could meet any cost, reached well nigh the point of disappearance. The charge laid against Republicans of countenancing the wicked principle of putting the dollar above the man, was entirely outdone by the Democratic practice, which put the dollar completely out of reach of the man…The very spirit of America withered, and the glory of the nation for the time departed…”

Then Coolidge, surveying the slate of Republican candidates in nationally and in Massachusetts, proclaimed his commitment: “In support of these candidates and the principles they represent, the country is turning again to realities. It wants to turn away from the mirage of false hopes and false security. It wants to be done with miasma of war. It wants the security of peace. It wants to live again under the government of the Constitution” (emphasis added). Even then, Coolidge knew that being partisan was not the culprit, a “narrow” and “bigoted” opposition for its own sake, was. There remained a valid place for partisan principles working with the Golden Rule instead of selfish and petty criticism as the expedient means to its own ends. As Coolidge showed, partisanship is not inherently incompatible with civility.

Calls for civility have all too often become thinly disguised efforts to muzzle any manifestation of disagreement, however tepid, guilting opposition into self-imposed compliance. No longer implementing what Madison called “the republican principle” of majority party coherence, the agenda of powerful minorities have created the impression that Washington’s “gridlock” problem is directly attributable to rogue obstructionists. The problem, it is claimed, comes not from a Republican House majority actively partnering with the Democrat Senate majority but from conservative or “Tea Party” partisans like Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul who point out this discrepancy of party commitments. Instead of the “reasonable” and “bipartisan” “adults” like Susan Collins, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Boehner, these “public enemies,” like Ted Cruz, are ostracized for nothing more than articulating ideals grounded in the conviction that their Party is a choice, not an echo, as Senator Goldwater once said. In truth, the opposition of those who know they are Taxed Enough Already has become the only group brave enough to hold a Republican Party, so cowed by decades of false accusations, to its elected mission. By demonizing anyone who defends a government of limited powers operating by our consent, any challenge by principled partisanship is marginalized as “extreme” and worse. Responsible governing takes a back seat to the game of appearing cooperative, sacrificing very valid reasons for party opposition on principle in place of the illusion of “bipartisanship.” Which, in reality, is nothing more than a disregard for party loyalty in order to form an altogether unelected entity one might call, a “Party of Power,” implementing a patchwork of minority agendas that the country does not want, did not choose and runs contrary to its interests as a whole.

No longer tempering legislation by debate or careful circumspection, measures, however destructive they be in fact, are hastily and emotionally implemented into law. Efforts to, at minimum, slow down this headlong rush into disaster are met with vitriol not only from outside one’s party but within it. What we see now at work is democratic mob rule not our long-cherished dual party system. If party government is to remain an “effective instrument,” as Coolidge called it, it must retain the confidence and consent of the governed. The party sent to control the part of the government to which it has been elected, must control it, enacting a consistent and united direction that upholds the party principles. “Any other course is bad faith,” Coolidge affirmed, “and a violation of the party pledges.” Being a maverick as the situation suits is not something noble and heroic, in other words. It is bad faith, a betrayal of what one is and commits to do. It is in party loyalty — which is simply a fidelity to the principles for which the party stands — that preserves faith in the people and their institutions by acting on what they have chosen be done.

Leaders can mislead but parties are entrusted with responsibility to carry out their ideals. Sometimes, as Coolidge said, keeping those promises means collaborating with those outside the party to keep one’s party honest. He did so without descending into mean vindictiveness, but he still championed those policies and positions that his Party committed itself to perform. As Coolidge wrote in his memoirs, “The independent voter who has joined with others in placing a party nominee in office finds his efforts were all in vain, if the person he helps elect refuses or neglects to keep the platform pledges of his party.”

When others wavered and deviated, Coolidge held course. He owed as much to the American electorate. Not all had voted for him, of course, but a majority party had been sent to assume command of the Executive and Legislative branches and, as far as it depended upon him, they would adhere to a platform that was partisan, a vision that meant something, policy proposals that coherently and clearly differentiated from what the Democrats would do. Coolidge would not govern by a different standard than what elected him. The anniversary of Hamilton’s untimely death should remind us that partisanship is not novel to our time. Just as civility did not sweep the country under Coolidge, so principled partisanship is not incompatible or somehow destructive to the country now. If it were, America would have died in its infancy. Coolidge articulates the abiding importance our two party system plays for government to remain an effective expression of our will. It means some opposition will unavoidably come our way. It means not everyone will agree to temper opposition along principled lines and thus rush into the bigoted and obsessive excesses possible with even good things. This does not mean party opposition is neither sound nor beneficial. Coolidge demonstrates that a principled partisanship has and will continue to serve this country well.

In an excellent speech by Mick Wright, candidate for Alderman in Bartlett, Tennessee, to a local Rotary Club in the Memphis area, we are reminded that a Republic functions by our active participation. It does not run itself. It is not only the spirit of Elizabeth Powel that preserves and renews but also the outlook and wisdom of Calvin Coolidge, whose diligent and practical application of principle into genuine public service still speaks. We must not assume that someone else will exercise for us the unique and personal responsibilities already in our hands. Mr. Wright understands that if public affairs are going to change for the better, it starts with you and with me in our homes, our neighborhoods, our local governments. It demands a public service at its most practical and personal. There simply is no substitute for an informed and involved citizenship. As Coolidge once said, “Naturally the question arises, what shall we do to defend our birthright? In the first place everybody must take a more active part in public affairs. It will not do for men to send, they must go. It is not enough to draw a check. Good government cannot be bought, it has to be given…Unless good citizens hold office bad citizens will.” After all, we are not impotently at the mercy of circumstances as they are, “We are the possessors of tremendous power, both as individuals and as states. The great question of the preservation of our institutions is a moral question. Shall we use our power for self-aggrandizement or for service?” To which end are we exerting the tremendous power each one of us possesses?