The Economics Of Harding And Coolidge Share Share Trending Vice Presidential candidate Calvin Coolidge acknowledged during the 1920 campaign trail that, “The country was already feeling acutely the results of deflation. Business was depressed. […] Wages had been paid that were not earned. The whole country, from the national government down, had been living on borrowed money. Pay day had come.” But Coolidge also gave the remedy to the depressed economy. “I contended that the only sure method of relieving this distress was for the country to follow the advice of Benjamin Franklin and begin to work and save.”[1] Also driving the cutting of the budget, Harding and Coolidge successfully reduced the budget in 1920 from $6.3 billion to $3.2 billion by 1922 – an astounding 49 percent.[2]