Wealth & Money Quote by Mitch Daniels

A dollar becomes a ballot in Mitch Daniels' hands: spend it your way, or let the state spend it for you. The line is crafted to turn taxation from a technical policy tool into a moral trespass, with “free citizen” doing the heavy lifting. It’s not just an economic claim; it’s a civic identity claim. If you’re truly free, the argument goes, the default relationship between you and government is noninterference, and any departure from that baseline demands a high bar: “a very necessary public purpose.”

Daniels’ specific intent is to reframe budget politics as liberty politics. Instead of debating tax rates, he’s debating legitimacy. “Ever” and “very” are rhetorical seatbelts, tightening the standard so that ordinary government functions start to look like indulgences. Even when he concedes that some public purposes qualify, he’s already set the presumption: taking is suspect; keeping is natural.

The subtext is strategic and contemporary: a nod to post-Reagan conservatism, when fiscal restraint was marketed as a defense of personal autonomy rather than austerity. It also flatters the voter as steward and adult, while casting government as a spender with weaker incentives and blurrier accountability. Calling taxation a “taking” quietly imports the language of loss, even coercion, without saying “theft.”

Contextually, it fits Daniels’ brand as a technocratic budget hawk with libertarian instincts (and Indiana’s small-government political culture). The line works because it moralizes a ledger item, shrinking the state not through spreadsheets but through conscience.