Defense Bill and Austerity
Politicians on both sides of the aisle talk about deficits and debt all the time, but only focus on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Now they are talking about deficits and debt in light of the stimulus/survival benefits that are being given to starving Americans due to Covid. However, today is a prime example of their hypocrisy and stupidity, as they overrode President Trump’s veto of the NDAA which is the defense spending bill which came in at a whopping $740 billion dollars.
$740 billion dollars does not make us any safer, does not encourage responsibility when thinking about future debts for our children, but it does ensure the military industrial complex stays alive and kicking. The amount we spend is more than the next 10 countries combined on what they spend per year. We are no safer or no less a target due to the largess of our bills. Yes we are a bully and people will concede to our demands, but must we go into massive amounts of debt to be a bully on the world stage?
With a spending bill this huge, we can be ensured that there is massive amounts of waste at the expense of the American taxpayer. The powers that be want a convoluted bill so they can hide their corruption and ineptitude that is ensured when we are spending this amount of money. What this also does is ensures that other programs are starved and are in the crosshairs of consistently getting cut. They spend so much here and talk about it being unpatriotic to talk about cutting the defense bill, when in reality it’s the most Patriotic thing to do is to cut the defense bill.
This money doesn’t go to our troops and those truly sacrificing, rather this money goes to corporations, lobbyists and politicians. This money goes to the wealthy to fund and encourage more wars in foreign nations that we shouldn’t be involved in. What we should do is gut this defense spending bill by one third to $500 billion and then cut more and invest this extra money in survival benefits for those suffering due to this pandemic and those in poverty because we love war more than our own people.
Republicans are their own level of stupid when it comes to austerity and approving massive defense spending. However, Democrats are right their with them at every step of these processes as evidenced by both houses of Congress vetoing Donald Trump to ensure their campaign donors are happy with them, while talking about the absurdity of giving normal Americans an additional $1400 because we don’t have the money. We have the money, but we also have moronic members of Congress who will always vote to spend money on the wealthy and well connected, while neglecting the poor and blaming it on lazy Americans who are starving.
If we want to have a healthier nation, we should try to not spend so much wasteful money on a bloated military industrial complex agenda that is perpetrated by both neoliberal and neoconservative members of the major political parties.
When politicians talk about budgets and debt, hosts of the mainstream media should pull up this graphic of how we spend so much money on wars and things that perpetuate war, while our own people are starving. Debt is only an issue when normal Americans are being taken care of. Both sides perpetuate this, so we should vote them all out!