Advice to Congress and the President regarding finances

Here is some advice to our Congressmen and the President:

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possiblem avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulating 

of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. - Former President George Washington (Farewell Address 1796)