preserving and strengthening the credit of the United States
government, because without that no leadership was a possibility.
For years the government had not lived within its income. The
immediate task was to bring our regular expenses within our
revenues. That has been done.

It may seem inconsistent for a government to cut down its regular
expenses and at the same time to borrow and to spend billions for
an emergency. But it is not inconsistent because a large portion of
the emergency money has been paid out in the form of sound loans
which will be repaid to the treasury over a period of years; and to
cover the rest of the emergency money we have imposed taxes to pay
the interest and the installments on that part of the debt.

So you will see that we have kept our credit good. We have built a
granite foundation in a period of confusion. That foundation of the
federal credit stands there broad and sure. It is the base of the
whole recovery plan.

Then came the part of the problem that concerned the credit of the
individual citizens themselves. You and I know of the banking
crisis and of the great danger to the savings of our people. On
March sixth every national bank was closed. One month later 90
percent of the deposits in the national banks had been made
available to the depositors. Today only about 5 percent of the
deposits in national banks are still tied up. The condition
relating to state banks, while not quite so good on a percentage
basis, is showing a steady reduction in the total of frozen
deposits--a result much better than we had expected three months
ago.