Politics & Power Quote by Judd Gregg

Judd Gregg’s sentence is a politician’s version of an X-ray: it’s meant to show the hidden break behind the headline number. In the stimulus debate, the public fixates on sticker shock - the big, scary price tag - and Gregg tries to flip the frame. The real catastrophe, he argues, isn’t spending money; it’s not having an economy robust enough to generate tax receipts. He’s making “revenue” do emotional work here: it’s a calmer, accountant’s word that smuggles in panic.

The intent is strategic. Gregg isn’t simply defending a stimulus package; he’s attempting to reclassify it from optional “government program” to unavoidable loss-prevention. Notice how “the numbers that represent this stimulus package” are described as mere representations, almost abstract, while “loss of revenue” is cast as concrete, inevitable, and compounding. The syntax is clunky, but the logic is clean: spend now or bleed later.

The subtext is also political cover. By foregrounding federal revenue rather than jobs, wages, or household stability, Gregg signals an audience: deficit hawks, budget committees, business-minded moderates. He’s offering them permission to support intervention without sounding like they’ve fallen in love with government expansion. Contextually, this sits in the post-crisis era when austerity rhetoric was rising: he’s warning that austerity can be self-defeating, because a stalled economy shrinks the tax base and makes deficits worse. It’s a plea to treat the economy as the engine, not the receipt.