Politics & Power Quote by Meg Whitman

Whitman’s line borrows the calm authority of a balance sheet and turns it into an argument about governing: the state is a machine that gets more expensive precisely when it’s most needed. The setup is classic executive framing. First, establish a shared premise ("as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down"). Then pivot to contrast: businesses get relief through shrinking variable costs, but government gets punished by rising demand. It’s a tight bit of rhetoric because it recasts social spending not as ideology, but as an unavoidable cost curve.

The subtext is sharper. By putting unemployment insurance, workers’ comp, health benefits, and welfare in a single breathless list, she collapses distinct programs with distinct constituencies into one swelling category: obligations. "You name it" does extra work here, inviting the listener to add their own resentments and assumptions about waste without her having to specify any.

Context matters: Whitman, a corporate leader turned political figure, is speaking to an audience primed to see government through private-sector metaphors. The comparison quietly smuggles in a value judgment: business discipline is natural and self-correcting; government is structurally perverse, expanding when it should tighten. What’s left unsaid is that the very "variable costs" she cites function as automatic stabilizers, designed to rise during downturns to prevent deeper collapse. The quote’s intent isn’t to describe that system neutrally; it’s to make the safety net sound like a fiscal trap, and to make austerity feel like realism rather than choice.