A popular notion among liberals is that budgets are “moral documents.” For example, in a September 5 News & Observer op-ed, Chapel Hill lawyer Vivian Connell contends, “How we spend our money – as a municipality, as a country or as an individual – says more about what we truly value than any rhetoric we spout.”
One would think that only Republicans pass “immoral” budgets.
Proposals for tax increases and higher spending make a budget “moral” in the eyes of liberals. But when Democrats made significant cuts to public education spending in 2009 and 2010, suddenly the chatter about “moral” budgets disappeared.
The absence was temporary.
Voters of North Carolina elected a Republican majority in the NC General Assembly in November 2010. The purveyors of moral standards, who believe (or say) that they are speaking on behalf of the “people,” reemerged to propagate their brand of partisan indignation in 2011 and raised it to a new level in 2013.
Obviously, self-appointed “moral guides” continue to use spread their message with the assistance of the mainstream media.
