One of the accomplishments of Millard Fillmore, born on this day in 1800, is that while serving in the New York legislature (to which he was elected at the early age of 28) he advocated for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, that odd confluence of civil and criminal law with which Charles Dickens was so taken. So skilfully did he press his argument that the New York legislature adopted such a law in 1831.
He remained concerned with fiscal responsibility for the rest of his public career. He was the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in the 27th Congress, and it occurred to him to assemble a compendium of the laws that authorized expenditures, so that if a budget item was questioned, he could quickly cite the law that authorized the expenditure. He then got Congress to adopt a measure to require the departments to cite the authorizing statutes when they presented their budget requests.
A biographer stated, perhaps with some disappointment, that Congressman Fillmore "did not claim to have discovered any original system of revenue," but we view that failure more positively today. It’s worth considering offering a Fillmore prize for Congressional fiscal responsibility, but for the unhappy fact that the losers would not much care and the winners might think it a satire.