"Until the 1960s public finance was run in all essentials on conventional lines—that is to say, with budgets more or less in balance outside of exceptional circumstances. The big change in principle came under Kennedy. In the autumn of 1962 the Administration committed itself to a new and radical principle of creating budgetary deficits even when there was no economic emergency. Removing this constraint on government spending allowed Kennedy to introduce a new concept of 'big government': the 'problem-eliminator.' Every area of human misery could be classified as a 'problem'; then the Federal government could be armed to 'eliminate' it."n Read the complete interview with the eminent historian Paul Johnson in the Wall Street Journal here.
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