Time & Perspective Quote by Jodi Rell

A politician’s favorite magic trick is turning time into a budget line item: push costs offstage now, let a future administration eat the bill, and call it “responsible.” Jodi Rell’s line punctures that choreography. She frames the maneuver as “the easy way out,” a phrase that sounds almost folksy until you notice how sharp the moral accounting is. The sin isn’t just penny-pinching; it’s governance by delay, using paperwork and calendar years as camouflage for broken obligations.

The structure does a lot of work. “Approve an early retirement plan” reads like a benevolent headline, the kind of thing that earns a press release and a photo op. Then she pivots to the hidden ledger: “but not pay out sick and vacation time to deserving employees.” That “deserving” is pointed. It dares the listener to imagine the alternative argument out loud-that these workers somehow didn’t earn what they banked. In one word, she turns an administrative dispute into an ethical breach.

“Unfortunately, later is now” is the closer you’d expect from someone who knows the politics of inevitability. It’s terse, deadline language with a moral edge: the bill has come due, and the state can’t keep treating its workers like an interest-free credit card. The intent is corrective and reputational at once: name the cynical tactic, establish who gets harmed, and force urgency onto a problem designed to be safely postponed.