"To do what we are doing in this budget to our children, cutting their health care funds, decreasing opportunity, simply so we can pay for tax cuts and a war in Iraq is beyond belief, and we need to reverse it"
About this Quote
A politician’s sharpest weapon is moral arithmetic, and Tom Allen does it in one sentence: he forces the listener to add up costs that budget spreadsheets try to hide. The line turns “our children” into the unavoidable ledger entry. It’s not just sentimental; it’s strategic. Kids can’t be accused of freeloading or partisanship, so invoking them yanks the debate away from technocratic tradeoffs and into a story about obligation.
Allen pairs concrete harms (“cutting their health care funds,” “decreasing opportunity”) with blunt beneficiaries (“tax cuts and a war in Iraq”). That contrast is the engine. He’s not arguing that budgets are hard; he’s arguing that the priorities are perverse, that the nation is choosing a present-tense reward for someone else and financing it with future damage. The phrase “simply so we can pay for” is doing heavy lifting: it frames the policy not as necessity but as elective indulgence.
“Beyond belief” signals more than outrage. It’s an attempt to make the opposing position socially illegitimate, something a reasonable person can’t defend without sounding callous. The closing demand, “we need to reverse it,” shifts from lament to marching order, inviting listeners to see the budget as a reversible choice rather than an inevitable reality.
Context matters: in the mid-2000s, Iraq spending and domestic austerity were politically entwined, and “tax cuts plus war” had become a shorthand critique of governance that privatizes gains and socializes risk. Allen’s intent is to weld those threads into a single moral indictment voters can remember.
Allen pairs concrete harms (“cutting their health care funds,” “decreasing opportunity”) with blunt beneficiaries (“tax cuts and a war in Iraq”). That contrast is the engine. He’s not arguing that budgets are hard; he’s arguing that the priorities are perverse, that the nation is choosing a present-tense reward for someone else and financing it with future damage. The phrase “simply so we can pay for” is doing heavy lifting: it frames the policy not as necessity but as elective indulgence.
“Beyond belief” signals more than outrage. It’s an attempt to make the opposing position socially illegitimate, something a reasonable person can’t defend without sounding callous. The closing demand, “we need to reverse it,” shifts from lament to marching order, inviting listeners to see the budget as a reversible choice rather than an inevitable reality.
Context matters: in the mid-2000s, Iraq spending and domestic austerity were politically entwined, and “tax cuts plus war” had become a shorthand critique of governance that privatizes gains and socializes risk. Allen’s intent is to weld those threads into a single moral indictment voters can remember.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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