Fiscal conservatism in the United States

Fiscal conservatism is a political-economic philosophy regarding fiscal policy and fiscal responsibility advocating low taxes, reduced government spending and minimal government debt.Free trade, deregulation of the economy, lower taxes, and privatization are defining qualities of fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism follows the same philosophical outlook of classical liberalism and economic liberalism regarding fiscal matters.

Fiscal conservatism is the economic philosophy of prudence in government spending and debt. Fiscal conservatives advocate the avoidance of deficit spending, the reduction of overall government spending and national debt, and ensuring balanced budgets. In other words, fiscal conservatives are against the government expanding beyond its means through debt.

Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, argued that a government does not have the right to run up large debts and then throw the burden on the taxpayer:

[I]t is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied ... [T]he public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large.

The Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson supported a weak central government and a more laissez-faire approach than that of the Federalist Party of Jefferson's rival Alexander Hamilton. They opposed Hamilton's plan to pay off the debts owed by the states for the expense of the American Revolution, because some of the debt was held by financiers and speculators (rather than the original holders) and because most of the debt was held by northern states. Hamilton passed his legislation and set up taxes to pay the debts. In exchange, he agreed to let Jefferson move the nation's capital to Washington, D.C.

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