In pursuance of that thought I said to the Congress today:
"I want to make it clear that we do not believe that we can get an adequate rise in national income merely by investing, and lending or spending public funds. It is essential in our economy that private funds must be put to work and all of us recognize that such funds are entitled to a fair profit."
As national income rises, "let us not forget that government expenditures will go down and government tax receipts will go up."
The government contribution of land that we once made to business was the land of all the people. And the government contribution of money which we now make to business ultimately comes out of the labor of all the people. It is, therefore, only sound morality, as well as a sound distribution of buying power, that the benefits of the prosperity coming from this use of the money of all the people ought to be distributed among all the people—at the bottom as well as at the top. Consequently, I am again expressing my hope that the Congress will enact at this session a wage and hour bill putting a floor under industrial wages and a limit on working hours—to ensure a better distribution of our prosperity, a better distribution of available work, and a sounder distribution of buying power.
You may get all kinds of impressions in regard to the total cost of this new program, or in regard to the amount that will be added to the net national debt.
It is a big program. Last autumn in a sincere effort to bring government expenditures and government income into closer balance, the Budget I worked out called for sharp decreases in government spending.
In the light of present conditions those estimates were far too low. This new program adds two billion and sixty-two million dollars to direct treasury expenditures and another nine hundred and fifty million dollars to government loans—the latter sum, because they are loans, will come back to the treasury in the future.
The net effect on the debt of the government is this—between now and July 1, 1939—fifteen months away—the treasury will have to raise less than a billion and a half dollars of new money.
Such an addition to the net debt of the United States need not give concern to any citizen, for it will return to the people of the United States many times over in increased buying power and eventually in much greater government tax receipts because of the increase in the citizen income.
What I said to the Congress in the close of my message I repeat to you.