Words in Biden’s Budget
The Biden administration on Monday released its budget for 2023. Federal budgets are a combination of spending data for hundreds of agencies and a discussion of proposed policies.
The 158‐page budget summary document starts with the president’s message and runs through discussions of each major department. I looked at the document’s language to see what it suggests about the administration and its priorities.
Here are word counts from the budget summary in brackets ( ), along with my comments.
“Invest” (398), “Spend” (11). Invest sounds less wasteful than spend.
“Support” (430), “Subsidy” (0). Never admit to subsidizing.
“Strengthen” (139), “Build” (137), “Bolster” (43), “Robust” (27). More spending and subsidizing.
“Advance” (148), “Address” (126), “Initiative” (65), “Commitment” (46). Tackling problems boldly.
“Worker” (58), “Entrepreneur” (13). Workers favored over entrepreneurs.
“Equity” (75), “Equality” (11). Two words with the same root.
“Gender” (43), “Growth” (33). Two words that start with G.
“Jobs” (74), “Inflation” (6). Emphasize the good news.
“Communities” (162), “Federalism” (0). Top‐down “investment” is undermining community autonomy.
“Bipartisan” (54), “Progressive” (2), “Liberal” (0). A centrist image before the election.
“Reform” (43), “Challenge” (38). All politicians love these words.
“Historic” (60). The Biden administration in particular loves this word.
“Capacity” (96), “Resilience” (58), “Prioritize” (26). It likes these words to.
“Freedom” (3), “Liberty” (0), “Restraint” (0). Alas, this is the government we’re talking about.