#Budget19 keeps strategic options open as date at polls looms large
TIMES change but stock phrases in budget speeches don’t. Years go by and they meld together. The scale of what happened yesterday was small. Culturally, its significance will ultimately be larger. There hasn’t been a budget speech I can remember that didn’t aspire to “responsible budgetary policy”, “responsible but ambitious policies for the future of our country”, or similar sentiments. These are just words and their value exists only as aspiration.
Next year will see a balanced budget and we will run surpluses for the future. So far, so good. But this brings me back to words. Admittedly, they don’t have the elasticity of numbers, but they do have transferable values. During the noughties the most unsustainable budgets in Irish economic history were balanced, in surplus, and prudent. They were full of ambition too, but it was hubris.
