"We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in"
About this Quote
Daniels wraps a fiscal lecture in a folksy love letter to Indiana, then sharpens it into a partisan shiv. “Hoosiers” and “quaint notions” sound like porch-swing humility, but the word choice is doing covert combat: “cling” is a tell, echoing the Obama-era trope about small-town voters “clinging” to guns and religion. Daniels flips the insult into a badge of honor, insisting this attachment isn’t “fear or ignorance” but prudence and pride. It’s cultural grievance converted into budget policy.
The quote’s engine is moral framing. “Paying our bills” turns bookkeeping into character, implying that deficits aren’t just mistakes, they’re ethical failures. “In the black” and “recent unpleasantness” (a wry, old-fashioned understatement) sanitize the messy context of recession-era austerity and make Indiana’s balance sheet sound like wartime steadiness. The neat trick is substituting household logic for public finance: the state is imagined as a family tightening its belt. That metaphor is politically potent because it feels intuitive, even when it dodges the realities of infrastructure backlogs, social services, and how governments invest.
Calling balanced budgeting an “old tribal ritual” is the final bit of performance. It’s mock-primitive, self-mythologizing, and community-binding: we’re the people who do the hard, sensible thing. The subtext is a contrast with spendthrift elites elsewhere, and a quiet pitch for Daniels-style governance as identity politics with spreadsheets.
The quote’s engine is moral framing. “Paying our bills” turns bookkeeping into character, implying that deficits aren’t just mistakes, they’re ethical failures. “In the black” and “recent unpleasantness” (a wry, old-fashioned understatement) sanitize the messy context of recession-era austerity and make Indiana’s balance sheet sound like wartime steadiness. The neat trick is substituting household logic for public finance: the state is imagined as a family tightening its belt. That metaphor is politically potent because it feels intuitive, even when it dodges the realities of infrastructure backlogs, social services, and how governments invest.
Calling balanced budgeting an “old tribal ritual” is the final bit of performance. It’s mock-primitive, self-mythologizing, and community-binding: we’re the people who do the hard, sensible thing. The subtext is a contrast with spendthrift elites elsewhere, and a quiet pitch for Daniels-style governance as identity politics with spreadsheets.
Quote Details
| Topic | Saving Money |
|---|
More Quotes by Mitch
Add to List
