Existing comment:
Johnson's conservative view of the Constitution, his devotion to the common man, and his faith in the American ideal of self-reliance, of which his life was a fine example, shaped his fiscal policies throughout his career.
Johnson consistently opposed high tariffs, convinced they helped big business but made goods more expensive for the working classes. Johnson fought federal government intervention in economic matters, such as road and canal building, even though they were popular enterprises in the mid-nineteenth century. He not only saw these activities as an unconstitutional expansion of federal power, but as costly projects burdensome to ordinary taxpayers and an interference with individual initiative. Too much government intervention, he felt, would destroy the self-reliant spirit.
In the Tennessee state assembly, as Tennessee's governor, and in the U.S. House of Representatives, Johnson emerged as a fighter for economy in government. On the federal level, he attempted to reduce the number of clerks in government departments, opposed reimbursement to government employees for travel costs, and wanted to lower federal salaries. |