Are Budgets “Moral Documents”?

October 29, 2009 by Cato  
Filed under Conservatism, Economics, Fiscal Policy, National, National Politics

As an Anabaptist I’ve been a fan of Jim Wallis and his Sojourners movement for some time.  I believe in peace.  I believe in justice.  However, I do not always agree with Wallis’s beliefs as to how we reach these goals.  I believe that peace is best obtained through a strong national defense.  I believe that there is no such animal as “economic” or “social justice”, which my Sojourner brethren seem to place so much emphasis on.  These are simply nominal substitutes for seizing the property of your fellow for your personal benefit.  Doing so in the name of “the greater good of society” is simply a means of making yourself feel better at the expense of someone else.

One of Wallis’s great sound bites is the claim that “Budgets are moral documents”.  Ray Nothstine has argued that Wallis is correct, but not in the same way as Wallis would hope:

Currently this country is facing no greater crisis than out of control spending and a mounting federal debt—a moral problem of prodigious proportions.

Nothstine is correct.  As our national government continues to spend far more than it receives in taxes we face a genuinely moral crisis.  As the government grows and grows, it continues to find more areas of lives to control.  We have a word for this – TYRANNY.  The continuous battle between liberty and tyranny is a moral issue as surely as it is a political one.