Leadership Quote by Louise Slaughter

Slaughter’s line pulls off a neat political judo move: she starts inside the language of austerity, then flips it into a case for expansion. “Difficult financial times” and “balance their budgets” signal fluency in the grim spreadsheet dialect local officials were forced to speak, especially in the post-2008 era when municipalities patched holes by trimming “non-essentials.” That’s the setup. The twist is the word “irresponsible” aimed not at spending, but at not spending.

The intent is tactical as much as principled. By conceding the reality of cuts “for so many of our districts,” she preempts the reflexive backlash that arts funding is frivolous. She frames arts investment as a duty of governance, not a luxury add-on, placing it alongside core public obligations. The subtext: leaders who only cut are managing decline, not steering a community. “As our local leaders strive” flatters mayors and school boards even as it nudges them toward a different definition of fiscal stewardship.

What makes the rhetoric work is its reversal of the usual moral hierarchy. Austerity politics loves to cast spending as indulgence and cutting as virtue. Slaughter argues the opposite: starving the arts is the reckless choice because it erodes civic identity, educational opportunity, and local economic life (the parts of a district that make people stay, invest, and participate). She’s also quietly reframing “services” to include culture - insisting that public life is not just roads and policing, but the shared imaginative infrastructure that turns a place into a community.