"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
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 |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Daniels, Mitch. (2026, January 16). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-hoosiers-hold-to-some-quaint-notions-some-89128/
Chicago Style
Daniels, Mitch. "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." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-hoosiers-hold-to-some-quaint-notions-some-89128/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-hoosiers-hold-to-some-quaint-notions-some-89128/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.
