Politics & Power Quote by Craig L. Thomas

Language does the dirty work here: “cutting” is quarantined in scare quotes, turned from a fiscal act into a media myth. Craig L. Thomas isn’t just disputing a number; he’s disputing a narrative. By insisting “we are not ‘cutting’ anything,” he redefines restraint as growth, using the plain arithmetic of year-over-year increases to puncture a politically useful talking point.

The intent is twofold. First, it shields the budget from the moral baggage of austerity. “Cutting” implies pain, sacrifice, maybe even cruelty. Thomas swaps that frame for something technocratic and supposedly incontrovertible: percentages. Second, it inoculates the speaker against accusations of hypocrisy. If you campaigned on smaller government yet propose higher outlays, the easiest defense is to argue that the real “cut” was always rhetorical - a cut in the rate of growth, not a reduction in dollars.

The subtext is that Washington sells “cuts” the way advertisers sell “sale” stickers: by choosing a baseline that flatters the claim. A budget can be called a cut while still rising, as long as it rises less than projected, less than inflation, or less than a rival plan. Thomas is exposing that semantic loophole, but he’s also exploiting it, drawing a bright line around defense and discretionary spending to reassure constituencies that matter: hawks who want bigger defense, and voters who don’t want to hear that domestic programs are shrinking.

In the early-2000s budget wars this was a familiar move: argue about verbs instead of values, then let the numbers quietly do what politics demands.