No One Remembers the Balanced Budgets

Amity Shales argues (correctly) that Reagan didn't care about balanced budgets, and that if austerity fanatics proponents need a hero they should look to Calvin Coolidge:

But Coolidge came in like a lion, determined to make austerity permanent. Coolidge met with his budget director, Gen. Herbert Lord, on his first day in office and routinely thereafter. The two men soon announced that they would deepen planned cuts in two politically sensitive areas: veterans and on District of Columbia public works. "I am for economy, and after that I am for more economy," Coolidge told voters—who gladly kept him in the White House when he ran in 1924.

I don't know much about Coolidge (except this), but neither does most Americans. Probably because balancing the budget didn't actually matter that much in the course of U.S. history. Whatever the wisdom of cutting benefits to WWI veterans, its pretty clear that from a budgetary perspective the Great Depression and WWII would totally undue these initiatives.

The fact that Republicans champion Reagan and don't discuss Coolidge should tell us something about how little importance balancing the budget has on U.S. economic history and prosperity.

Also this:

When an admirer in South Africa sent two lion cubs to the president, Coolidge named them Budget Bureau and Tax Reduction to emphasize the linked approach.

Terrible names for lions.