White: Preserving inherited values requires balance
When celebrating Fourth of July, remember Jefferson
Updated 7:14 pm, Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Many nations have holidays on the anniversary of the date on which they obtained freedom from colonial rule. In contrast, Americans celebrate on the day they first published a justification for independence.
On that day, July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress also asked a committee to design an official seal to symbolize values shared by the United States. The design for that seal proposed by Thomas Jefferson - the author of the Declaration of Independence - is more relevant than ever. He sought to remind Americans that no generation should impose unfair burdens on the next.
The original committee on the seal - Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams - considered images that invoked traditional authority. For one side of the seal, they proposed a depiction of Moses leading his enslaved people from Egypt.
Jefferson believed that the other side of the seal should show another ancient image of freedom - two armed Saxon warriors who had ruled England before its conquest by Normans. Jefferson idealized the egalitarian Saxon culture and blamed Normans for imposing European feudalism on England.
Before 1776, Jefferson had been fighting in Virginia, with some success, to purge the law of feudal land ownership restrictions. For example, he objected to restrictions that permitted ownership of land only by the eldest male heir, a type of restriction that would perpetuate an aristocracy in a largely agricultural society. Jefferson especially resented debts that could persist from one generation to the next; in his own long life he was never able to pay off the principal of debts inherited from his father and father-in-law.
Congress never endorsed Jefferson's proposed seal and ultimately adopted one with another image of freedom and strength, an American eagle. Jefferson, however, continued to promote the virtue of limited debt.
After reading the Constitution, he asked his friend James Madison to consider amending it to prevent Congress from incurring more debt than could be paid off within one generation. With reasoning that seems prophetic, he envisioned that future elected officials may be tempted to use debts to disguise the costs of spending that occurred during their limited terms in office.
Jefferson stayed true to his principles by endorsing budgets that used surpluses to pay down debt during his presidency.
He and succeeding generations of American leaders avoided borrowing to pay for routine spending and used debt only in extraordinary circumstances, such as during wars and economic downturns, or for Jefferson's own Louisiana Purchase.
Woodrow Wilson, the scholar and future president, explained how casual use of federal debt violated a principle on which the nation was founded: "appropriation without accompanying taxation is as bad as taxation without representation."
Today's federal budget, reflecting an agreement by Democratic and Republican leaders, incurs debt to fund spending more than half a trillion dollars greater than existing tax revenue.
For several years, federal debt has remained at a level nine times greater than tax revenues legally available for debt service, the highest level since before Jefferson's presidency began in 1801. Official forecasts of rising debt service show the impact of this burden on the future; within a decade, total annual interest payments are expected to absorb half of all personal income tax revenues.
On July Fourth, orators quote from Jefferson's brilliant Declaration of Independence to remind Americans that they have inherited a nation built on enduring values. Preserving those values requires the proper balance between peace and strength, symbolized in a national seal with an eagle holding both arrows and an olive branch.
As we celebrate July Fourth under the shadow of high federal debt, we might remember Jefferson's ideal of freedom from feudal practices that allowed one generation to limit the horizons of the next.
Bill White, chairman of Lazard Houston, is the author of "America's Fiscal Constitution: Its Triumph and Collapse," and is a former a mayor of Houston and U.S. deputy secretary of energy.