A Budget’s Horizon…Larger than It Appears

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Lisa Saye
September 8, 2025

The budget has always been a weapon. In some eras it was a weapon for good. In other eras it has been a weapon for weapon lovers. A budget is the moral position of the administration that executes it. An administration’s moral position operates within specific degree levels. If the budget hurts the citizens while benefiting the few, then the moral position of the administration by degree is low or nonexistent. If it helps all of the citizens, specifically those historically left out and marginalized, then the moral position of the administration is high.

A useful budget should be very specific when necessary while taking into account the needs of the vast citizenry. There is too much oversimplification in the previous sentence for it to go unnoticed. What is obvious can be the most vague as it relates to delivering and funding public services. For one thing, the drama of a budget’s narrative is in the debate that happens before the last line is funded. Often, a debate the public never witnesses. This impacts the narrative arc of every single budget at every level of government. Within that arc, budget designers carry a thunderous responsibility to collect, to spend, to improve and to protect the basic well-being of each citizen and to do so on purpose.

Budgets not only identify the expenditure priorities of a government, it also indicates the energy and direction of those in leadership positions. As such, budgets are not immune to the blind spots of the representatives who build them. They should be but they’re not. Ripping a budget to pieces, underfunding and dismantling portions or parts of relevant departments does not constitute a political victory. Such an occurrence may be seen as a tragedy or the beginning of more just like it. There should be nothing curious about a budget. Its aim should be to cover those areas that are shared by the public which would include but are not limited to education, transportation, health and the climate. End of message.

To be sure, there is no business case when setting up the rationale for a public budget. We have toyed with this notion for a few decades because we desperately want to believe that government is somehow just like a business. No belief could be further from the truth. I cannot commit an adequate number of sentences in this essay for an appropriate explanation of why the two entities are so different, but a good place to start is in how they are defined. Governments serve stakeholders while businesses serve shareholders. Decision-making in government is slowed by policy while decision-making in business is sped up by competition and necessity. Many public leaders have tried to apply business features to strict governmental aspects only to realize that government is too large, too diverse and too submissive to be a business. Still, multiple line items in governmental budgets have begun to look more and more like the budget lines in a corporate spreadsheet. I suppose some lessons take more time.

So, why are we talking about budgets all of a sudden? I believe we all know why. I think we know and we know how we got here, yet again. We have a package problem. A package that constantly creeps into our funding and budget intentions. It’s a package that we have been carrying for a long time. It is withered and worn but patched and sturdy in the wounds we refuse to treat. It is a misdirected issue that reaffirms our prior concerns, narrows our commitments and reemphasizes our original condition, again. The study of budgeting types such as zero-based budgeting, line-item budgeting or performance-based budgeting have seemed to become a waste of time. We are funding feelings as opposed to needs. These feelings are connected to misty-eyed recollections of the way we never were and the way we never will be. In this environment, the budget has become merely a tool to diminish.

We are standing in what may be the last gap of opportunity before government as we have come to know it ends. If it ends, even a good budget won’t save us. Public administrators are again the very first voice and the very last line of defense when alienation is legitimized through statute. Bad policy is bad policy no matter how lovely its prose. If we don’t take today to help ourselves then we should use history books in soups because we apparently haven’t used them to learn anything. That’s not an indictment against all of humanity, just the ones who know better and won’t do better. A budget, more than any government tool, should reflect a same-ness that a subsidy does not and one that a tax break cannot. It should be the middle where we always talk about meeting. The aim of an administration is never clearer than within the line items of its annual appropriations list. Its intent may be cloudy, but a budget has never told a lie.

The @object in mere painting was painted and titled by Lisa Saye.

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Author: Dr. Lisa Saye served as Fulbright Specialist in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and as International Consultant for the United Nations Development Program in The Maldives. She also served as Chair of the Division of Social Sciences and Humanities and as Associate Professor of Public Administration at American University Afghanistan. Dr. Saye can be reached by email at [email protected].

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