Moral Budgeting

Have you heard?  Local, state, and federal governments across the US are faced with a serious budget challenge. Like any public problem, there is no “right” technical solution that will solve everything. Every proposal has trade-offs. So, when making these tough decisions, it is extremely important that we honestly weigh the pros and cons of different proposals. Sure, we want to balance the budget, but it is not enough to justify a cut to a program, or the removal of collective bargaining rights, by simply saying "we're faced with a deficit.".  If the deficit were the only value we looked at when making a political decision, then we wouldn’t have extended the Bush Tax cuts, we would raise taxes, and cut virtually every government program.

I think that it is immoral to justify a political decision in such a superficial way. We don’t want a society that jumps to conclusions based on rhetoric, so any effort to sway opinions using rhetoric is just plain wrong. Further, our societies reliance on mass media outlets for political information is one of the factors that leads to decision-making based on rhetoric and the wrong way to make decisions. 

Now, budgeting is a complex and time consuming process, so it is unreasonable and idealistic to propose that every American should have thorough discussions about every budgetary proposal. However, THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO LEARN ABOUT BUDGETING AND PARTICIPATE IN BUDGETING. The Participatory Budgeting Process in Porto Alegre, Brazil is a classic example of a different way to do things.

In the United States, democratic innovation is our proud tradition. We must learn to create new methods for budgeting that are less vulnerable to political opportunism and manipulation and more likely to reflect our societies strong moral compass.