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Commentators discuss what they would save and what they would scrap in today's Budget.

[subscription required] that she isn't convinced that Tory Big Society rhetoric will match up to the practice:

"[I]f benefits are frozen, as has been suggested, then it will hit the poorest hardest. It will look increasingly unfair if wealthy pensioners continue to receive free bus passes, winter fuel allowances and eye tests and if bankers' wives can carry on receiving child benefit until their children are 18. There will also be some tough decisions about the long-term unemployed."

[subscription required] that it is possible for this Budget to create a small state which supports the Big Society concept:

"The first challenge is increasing incentives to work. The last government oversaw a 40 per cent increase in welfare, but left 5m on out-of-work benefits. Some 1.4m under-25s are now not working or studying, while working-age poverty is at its highest level for 50 years. Huge spending to alleviate poverty has done little but create a massive barrier, both structural and cultural, to work.
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"My wife and I run a rehabilitation project for ex-prisoners, some of whom live in state-subsidised private flats. The moment they get a job, they lose both their Jobseeker's Allowance and housing benefit. Quite right, you might say: except this means earning £15,000 a year just to earn as much as the dole. Long-term unemployed ex-offenders rarely find such jobs immediately, and therefore have strong incentives to stay on welfare."

some benchmarks for judging the Budget:

"If commentators are only talking about pain when Mr Osborne sits down on Tuesday he will have failed. If we are also talking about reform and a new economy he will be on the path to success...
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"This should be a reforming budget that - over time - will deliver a smaller state and lower, simpler, fairer taxes."

the bureaucrat:

"The drive for more accountable government had translated into hiring thousands of accountants.
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"That, in short, is the story of shrinking the state. Taxpayers need to know that their money is being spent sensibly, but recipients of public funds are now under such hot-breathed pressure from the politicians to footnote exactly what they are doing that it gets in the way of the work...
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"And now the connotations around the word are all to do with forms in triplicate and paper jams and call centres. But at its best bureaucracy can mean collecting, analysing and applying information that helps all of us."

that George Osborne isn't cutting for the fun of it:

"Believe it or not, Tories are politicians too; and I have never met a politician who does not seek popularity above everything else. David Cameron and George Osborne would like to be liked by the electorate, every bit as much as did Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They know that cutting public expenditure by significant amounts is a guaranteed path to unpopularity for any government...
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"Now, I realise that it is difficult for Labour's leading lights - especially while they are vying with each other to prove to their own internal electorate just how good he or she would be as leader at clobbering the Government - to admit that the Conservative-led coalition is trying to act in the national interest."

that George Osborne looks at an alternative to savage cuts:

"As the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests, a staged 3p increase in the basic and higher rates of income tax would raise £15 billion and rebalance the planned 80:20 split between cuts and tax rises that makes it virtually impossible to shield the less well-off. He could also impose a tougher levy on bankers and financial institutions. All would produce howls of pain, but anything would be better than a fate that threatens all citizens, irrespective of age or wealth.
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"In the name of averting ruin, Mr Osborne risks rounding up the generation on whom the future of this nation depends and forcing it down the long road to perdition."

on how Labour should respond to the Budget

"There is an alternative. The Conservatives and Cleggite Lib Dems will be desperate to estabish that this is unavoidable, harsh medicine. To rebut that attack we have to suggest the outlines of an alternative. That choice needs to be built on creating growth, so we therefore need to be talking about measures to support private sector job creation and these can't be simply extensions of State Aid. I'd be looking at capital and R&D tax allowances, the creation of special enterprise zones in high unemployment areas, increased support for high skill employers for training, and infrastructure investment in transport, research and housing provision."

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