A Guide to Defending Your Budget

In a Politico column today, Michael Kinsley deconstructs the literary genre of budget pleading -- the impassioned defense, whether in an op-ed, open letter, or congressional floor speech, of a particular federal program or agency against efforts to slash its funding. He boils down such defenses to their essential elements.

I'l share the first three:

1. Expression of general support for deficit reduction. Reference to easy answers (there are none). Reference to burden (all must share).
2. Reference to babies and bathwater. Former should not be discarded with latter.
3. This program/agency/tax break is different. A bargain for the taxpayers. Pays for itself many times over. To eliminate or cut would be bad for children/our troops.

Kinsley lists four more principles, and it's worth clicking through to read them. Whether or not you share the view he expresses in the piece that the U.S. Institute of Peace isn't worth defending, this is an insightful breakdown of a type of rhetoric that we're destined to see quite a bit of in the coming months.