Of budgets and morality

The posting two days ago that provides a link to E.J. Dionne's column on the budget bill is still the must-read entry on this issue. Nevertheless, having just seen the news that the bill passed and is going to the president for his signature, I find myself at one of those moments where I think I have to raise my voice as a citizen, or I've abdicated my responsibility.

First, my histrionic moment. I have children, and any of you reading this who also do will understand viscerally Dionne's image of the woman who, sometime next year, will have to make the decision about whether or not she can afford to take her sick child to the doctor. Not being able to take your sweating, vomiting child who has a 104-degree fever to the doctor because you can't afford it (and if you have a child, at some point s/he is sweating, vomiting and has a 104-degree fever) is the kind of thing that drives a parent to practical insanity. The dicates of decency say that we should try to avoid a situation where our fellow human beings face such choices if we can. And we can.

But we didn't. From what I understand, the bill that just passed actually does cut benefits like health care for the poor while giving tremendous financial perks to the wealthy and large companies. And the tradeoff actually was straight forward and happened in a back room. We're used to people on both sides of the aisle taking complex negotiations and complicated legislation and oversimplifying to demonize an opposing position. But in this case, it's what happened. The poor are getting less, and the non-poor are getting more.

Which brings us to the moral dimension of a nation's budget. We tend to treat budgeting as a technocratic issue. (In truth, as a general public, we tend not to treat budgeting at all. It's overwhelmingly complicated and opaque.) The line items in a budget, however, and the tradeoffs made to derive them, inherently express the priorities--and yes, the values--of the citizenry. A budget is a moral document.

I don't believe the budget bill just passed reflects the core values of our country and its citizenry. I believe that only the most conservative and the most libertarian among us believe that we have no obligation to provide a safety net for each other, and that the core responsbilities of the state do not include providing for the basic human needs of its citizens. I also believe that few of America's citizens really believe that cutting back programs for the poor in order to give those financial benefits to a wealthier class---as opposed to using the reductions strictly to reduce the deficit or increase personal or national savings, for example--is a moral approach to governing.

The previous posting on this subject referred to "spend and spend" Republicans. I look at this budget and see "bleed and spend." And I'm giving that label to anyone who engaged in the backroom dealing and then put this thing over the top. We're bleeding the people who need it. And we may be bleeding morally, too. We have to stop the bleeding.