Budgeting for Opportunity

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When politicians are fortunate, they get to choose the goals their budgets set. In periods of recession, they can budget for growth. Facing huge deficits, they can budget for austerity. In times of plenty, they can budget for upward mobility and equality of opportunity. 

Our leaders are not so lucky: they somehow need to budget for all three goals at once. 

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Conservatives have spent a lot of time talking about American exceptionalism of late. But not every threat to the American dream comes from runaway spending. The United States was increasingly stratified, and the middle class increasingly squeezed, well before Barack Obama won the presidency. Against this backdrop, conservatives will deserve to win the looming fiscal battle only if they find a way to budget not only for austerity, but for opportunity as well.