Odd Wisconsin Archive Much fuss was made in the media last week
about the supposed commitment in the new Congress to a "pay-as-
you-go" fiscal policy. The vast majority of House members
pledged to expend only as much money as they have and to make
deficit spending difficult. This merely brought them in line
with 19th-c. Milwaukee editor and politician Rufus King
(1814-1876), who urged the same restraint when Wisconsin was
becoming a state more than 150 years ago: "Abuse of taxation
cannot extend further than the ability of the people in any one
year to pay," he wrote in 1846, "while the abuse of the
borrowing power may be felt for ages to come." He was extremely
wary of enabling government to borrow against future income to
run current programs: "One appalling fact connected with
national or state debts -- never yet has one been fully paid
off!" King helped defeat the first constitution at the polls in
1847, and was himself elected as a delegate to the 1848
convention that wrote a new one. He also held several