At one Cabinet meeting during Ike’s [Dwight D. Eisenhower’s] Presidency, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey told the President that the national debt might rise above the legal limit.

“Who will have to go to jail if that happens?” asked Ike.

“We will have to go to Congress,” Humphrey reminded him.

“Oh,” cried Ike, “that’s worse!”

from Eisenhower: The Inside Story by Robert J. Donovan (New York, 1956), p. 144, quoted in Presidential Anecdotes by Paul F. Boller, Jr. (1981, printed in the United States of America by Kingsport Press, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee; set in Times Roman), p. 297.