Byron Callan writes at Aviation Week that, “The consensus among sell-side analysts is that the U.S. defense budget has entered a new up-cycle.”
This increase in defense spending comes, of course, at the expense of a whole host of federal programs, programs that not only keep people safe but sustain the lives of vulnerable young and elderly Americans.
Donald Trump tweeted a pathetic and wholly dishonest defense of his budget, claiming that “A budget that puts #AmericaFirst must make safety its no. 1 priority—without safety there can be no prosperity,” but the truth is something else entirely:
A budget that puts #AmericaFirst must make safety its no. 1 priority—without safety there can be no prosperity: https://t.co/9lxx1iQo7m
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2017
Take a look at some of the cuts as demonstrated by this chart from Bloomberg:
If you look at the list of Trump budget losers, it is difficult to make the argument that his budget is protecting us, or that safety is his first concern.
The EPA protects our air and water. Poisoned water and air will kill people. Trump cut its budget.
NOAA weather satellites protect all of us. Increasingly erratic weather as a result of the anthropogenic global warming the Trump administration denies will kill more people. Trump cut its budget.
And the list goes on, affecting Americans in all sorts of ways, most of them fatally, as these examples show.
Trump says safety is no. 1, but he’s taking healthcare away from 24 million Americans, many of whom will die as a result. All Trump’s broken promises to give healthcare to everyone didn’t stop Rush Limbaugh from saying Trump’s budget is a “another promise kept” (good luck finding the first).
Trump says safety is no. 1, but he is cutting funding to the NIH, which studies diseases others do not study, in efforts to keep people like my own son alive:
.@NIH NIH funding has not been that low in over 15 years. Trump's budget will singlehandedly destroy America's competitive edge in science.
— Bryan William Jones (@BWJones) March 16, 2017
Trump says we have to be safe, but he’s not making Americans safe, but killing them:
Sometimes trump administration lies cost lives. https://t.co/Zx5PWtPAVC
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) March 17, 2017
Mick Mulvaney says Meals on Wheels "not showing any results." Actual peer-reviewed research says otherwise. https://t.co/B6ZRxtWIAf pic.twitter.com/YI6jiAgMBk
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) March 16, 2017
Trump says safety is no. 1, but he’s not making vulnerable seniors safe, but killing them:
Cuts of any kind would be devastating for millions of vulnerable seniors. Our #SkinnyBudget statement: https://t.co/R2MkmuitBR #Budget2017
— Meals on Wheels (@_MealsOnWheels) March 16, 2017
If you want to know what this means, Obama’s White House ethics czar Norm Eisen does the math:
“By Sun, Trump will have spent $12 mil of taxpayer $ on Mar A Lago. That’s 2 mil of the Meals on Wheels ($6 each) his budget eliminates. [S]o for every day that he spends at Mar A Lago, 166,000 seniors will go hungry. Why doesn’t he cut his trips, &leave meals on wheels alone.”
Trump says safety is no. 1, but he’s not making citizens of New York City safer, he’s putting them at risk, with NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill saying at a press conference,
“Under the president’s proposal, nearly all federal funding to the NYPD would be eradicated. This funding is absolutely critical. It is the backbone of our entire counter-terrorism apparatus.”
Trump says safety is no. 1, but he is also making us less safe in the future by driving away some of the world’s best and brightest young people, people who will possibly now not have the opportunity to realize their potential:
This is nuts! We are driving away some of the world's brightest students. Not just wrong, but foolish. https://t.co/cthZd2oSWX NYTimes:
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 17, 2017
When U.S. defense spending already dwarfs that of Russia and China combined, we see that President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex has come to its full fruition under Donald Trump and the most senseless increase in defense spending ever seen.
Donald Trump’s budget isn’t about making safety his no. 1 priority. Even the Pentagon says global warming is a national security threat yet Trump and his administration reject global warming.
More tanks and airplanes won’t stop the seas from rising to flood coastal areas or keep rising temperatures from damaging the world’s food supply. The war in Syria was brought about in part by global warming, not because there were not enough tanks or airplanes.
Trump’s budget is about diverting our tax dollars away from Americans and toward the military industrial complex, directing dollars away from the people who need it most, vulnerable children and the elderly, and using it to fill the swamp he promised to drain.
Photo: Fox News/Twitter
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