The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
A budget, as you know, isn’t really a budget. It is a declaration of who you are. A statement of your values. A testament to what you think is important.
A budget is, as Christian writer and activist Jim Wallis reportedly was the first to say, “a moral document.” If your neighbor spends lots of money on guns and a security system but his kids are hungry and wearing tattered clothes, well, that tells you plenty about his morality.
Which brings us to the proposed federal budget that President Trump released Thursday. You might have heard about it; it’s been in all the papers. Trump wants to boost military spending by 10 percent, homeland security by 6.8 percent, and Veterans Affairs by 5.9 percent. In dollar terms, that means, for example, a $54 billion increase to the defense budget.
Now, the conservative in you might be thinking, “No way! The federal government needs to cut spending, not increase it!” And you might have added even more exclamation points to really drive home the point!! But never fear, ye of little faith; President Trump has got this covered. In order to pay for the increase in defense spending and border patrols, he proposes a nip here and a tuck there.
You know, like a 29 percent cut to the State Department, which in a perverse way makes some sense. Who needs diplomacy when you can spend $650 billion on the military and you have lots and lots of border agents?
Now, you probably know all of this. You probably even know that Trump wants to eliminate the Meals on Wheels program that delivers food to homebound senior citizens, and that budget director Mick Mulvaney said, “We look at this as $140 billion spent over 40 years without the appreciable benefit to show for that type of expenditure.” Unless you consider food to be an appreciable benefit, Mulvaney might have a point, I guess. But it’s all a matter of priorities. More than 1 million senior citizens might now go hungry, but at least they will be safe from bad hombres.
All of this has led to much caterwauling from Trump’s opponents. It also has led to much caterwauling from Trump’s supporters about the caterwauling from opponents. Outrage these days is the currency by which opinions are sold. Trump and the Republicans won the election, and this budget, presumably, is why people voted for them.
And yet, it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder about what this country is and what we value and what we think is important. Because if Trump’s budget truly is a moral document that represents Americans, then we are a callous, fearful, and misguided bunch.
Defense spending
Take the defense budget. The United States already spends $596 billion a year on the military, which is more than the next seven biggest spenders combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Our defense spending is more than twice that of China and Russia put together, yet there still are people so insecure about our place in the world that they insist it is not enough.
Look at it this way: Many of the people who favor increasing the military budget are the first to insist that spending more money doesn’t solve the problem when it comes to, say, funding for schools. Trump, by the way, wants to cut federal education spending by 13 percent, but at least there will be plenty of jobs as border agents for our children.
Trump’s budget, the experts say, has no chance of getting through Congress; it’s more like a suggestion. Yet in many ways that makes it even more disturbing.
You see, the problem is not that Trump wants to increase a military budget that is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Argentina or Sweden, or that he wants to cut the Environmental Protection Agency by 31 percent, or that he can’t bear to spend a couple billion so seniors can have food and a little human interaction.
No, the problem is that President Trump thinks this is what we want. And that is a sad commentary on our values.
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