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Nov 29, 2005

Who Said This?


by Liberty and Power


"I accuse the present administration of being the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all our history. It is an administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs and reduced earning power of the people. Bureaus and bureaucrats, commissions and commissioners, have been retained at the expense of the taxpayer."

Click on Read More for the answer.

Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential campaign.

Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1964), 295.


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Robert Higgs - 12/1/2005

Roosevelt's "first instinct," according to New York Times reporter Turner Catledge, "was always to lie," although "sometimes in midsentence he would switch to accuracy because he realized he could get away with the truth in that particular instance."

David T. Beito - 12/1/2005

Pathological perhaps but it seems to be quite calculated. FDR was the ultimate triangulator in 1932. At the same time, he was saying things like this he was promising to federalize unemployment insurance and spend money on public works.

Robert Higgs - 11/30/2005

You see, even a pathological liar may slip up and tell the truth sometimes.