CORRECTION!

In these articles, one of my recurring themes has been the need to speak the truth to each other.

Unfortunately, I violated that principle in my previous article on the Federal Debt Ceiling.

I said that the United States had had a federal debt ever since Secretary of the Treasury Alexamder Hamilton. That statement, it turns out, is not true.

In 1835, under President Andrew Jackson, the United States fully paid its national debt. The very next year, the national economy went into recession, the federal government borrowed money again, and we have had a national debt ever since.

So, the truth is that since President George Washington authorized his Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, to incur debt in the name of the United States, we have had a national debt ever since, except in the year 1835, when, for less than one year, we were national-debt free.