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Melinda Lewis
social policy, social work, advocacy, and community organizing analysis and commentary
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Better budget cutting
One of the most unnecessarily obvious things I’ve ever said here:
We’re in budget-cutting mode.
In Congress and in state legislatures and in local and county government and in nonprofit organizations.
And these exercises in austerity tend, for the most part, to follow the same script:
Cut, with only superficial attention to the acknowledged impact of the cuts, even when they are dire. Cuts, without considering other options to deal with deficits. Cuts, without much consideration of the long-term consequences.
Cuts, sometimes, just for cuts’ sake.
In Decisive, the discussion about how corporations should approach decision-making around budgets holds a lot of lessons for these budget-cutting frenzies, too.
And it makes me feel less alone, because I’ve been making some of these points for a long time.
What would that look like, in the context of government budget cutting, if we were thinking about growth and investment even alongside preparing for retrenchment and reduction? And what might be the economic impact, especially over the long haul, of that kind of foresight? And how could approaching budget cutting (and, for social workers, the critical task of staying at the table during the budget cutting negotiations, even when we loathe the process and the outcome) with this more intentional and strategic thinking?
It doesn’t mean that we’ll ever like the idea of retreating from our public commitments to the common welfare.
But maybe budget cutting can be better.
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