Senator Clinton's Moral Economics | by Ben
While folding laundry, I was watching the end of a presentation Senator Clinton was doing back on July 10th at the Aspen Ideas Summit on C-SPAN. A woman in the audience asked her about budget discipline, about what choices she would make to reduce government spending. Clinton didn't answer the question directly, but instead started talking about how her husband's policies provided a balanced budget and how rules in Congress under Democratic leadership prevented the introduction of new programs without a method to fund them included in the proposals. However, she then went on the attack, pointing out the lack of discipline and the major increases of spending under Bush, and then she ended with an interesting choice of rhetoric: the issues of the last few years have primarily been moral issues that have political effects, however, them more important problems that we need to face are political questions that have moral implications.
I really like the symmetry here, although I think the idea is a bit subtle for a non-political-junkie audience. She's referring to wedge issues the Republicans have used like same-sex unions and reproductive rights -- they have great evocative power with some audiences, but their resolution doesn't deal with the bigger economic and social issues of a society, ones that directly effect the way we all live our lives. She's trying to associate our own values with the economic questions of our day; tax cuts and spending decisions have a moral component, and as people who value communities, infrastructure, and opportunity, we should find a way to get people to balance what affects them immediately with what affects society in the medium-term and long-term.