Folks on the religious left have long argued that a budget is a “moral document.” It reflects powerful value judgments about priorities and national commitments. Given the massive changes in President Barack Obama’s spending plan — shifting resources from the rich to the poor and middle — one might have expected someone like Obama to use highly moralistic language in justifying the changes, emphasizing the social obligations of the fortunate toward the “least of these.”
In unveiling the budget, Obama and his team did use moralistic language — but not the phraseology I was expecting. The dominant moral concept in this budget is not compassion but “responsibility.”
By my count, the budget 114 pages of budget narrative used the words “responsibility,” “irresponsible,” “responsibly” or other derivatives of the word at least 61 times — 117 times if you include the title pages and folio lines for the document, which was called “A New Era of Responsibility.”
Politically, this is shrewd. Responsibility is perceived as a middle American, conservative value. Americans may want “compassion” or “justice” but hitting those themes would have raised concerns that Obama would be a poor steward of the money or was taking from the rich to give to the poor.
Really, what they ‘re trying to do is shift the discussion from left vs. right to adult behavior vs. childish behavior.
In his inaugural address, he tied this notion directly to the Bible, alluding to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. “We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
In his budget, he’s reinforced the theme.