Education Quote by Roy Barnes

“Enhancing revenues” is politician-speak doing a lot of work: it gestures toward money without naming the politically radioactive nouns (taxes, fees, reassessments) that actually produce it. Roy Barnes, speaking from within the pragmatic governance lane, frames public investment as a tidy equation: more revenue in, better schools and roads out. The intent is managerial credibility. He’s not selling a vision so much as selling competence - the promise that the state can be run like a well-balanced ledger.

The subtext is where the persuasion lives. By pairing education with infrastructure, Barnes bundles two “motherhood and asphalt” priorities that are hard to oppose in polite company. Education signals moral seriousness and long-term uplift; infrastructure signals daily frustration and economic competitiveness. The combination subtly rebukes anti-tax absolutism: if you want the stuff you complain about (potholes, overcrowded classrooms), you have to fund it. “Help us” also distributes responsibility outward, inviting voters and legislators to see revenue increases as collective self-maintenance rather than a top-down extraction.

Context matters: this is the language of a late-20th/early-21st century state executive trying to navigate a public that wants Scandinavian outcomes with Southern tax bills. Barnes governed in Georgia, where growth pressures, school funding debates, and transportation bottlenecks made “investment” a necessity but “tax increase” a liability. The quote works because it’s calibrated to that contradiction: it avoids ideological combat and instead offers a transactional bargain. Pay a bit more, get a functioning state. Whether the bargain holds is the political fight he’s sidestepping - and implicitly preparing to wage.