A common liberal slogan holds that "budgets are moral documents." Yet this is not literally true. A document cannot be moral anymore than a brick can be entrepreneurial. Morality requires responsibility, and responsibility requires some threshold of agency and understanding. What these commentators and activists mean to say, of course, is not that the documents are moral but that they disclose the morality of the people who made them. Budgets are records of decisions that reflect values and priorities, and the budgeters are morally accountable for these decisions just as they are morally accountable for the virtues and vices that shape them.
Read Full Article »
