Do you ever think to yourself, “Boy, I sure do with we spent less money protecting the environment and more on guns and bombs and stuff.” You don’t? Well, Donald Trump does, and he’s got a plan to make it happen. It’s going to cost us, though.
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The president told a group of 46 state governors on Sunday that he plans to expand military spending by an unprecedented degree. Actually, “one of the greatest military buildups in American history” was the phrase that Trump used. More specifically, the orange-hued dingleberry wants to send an extra $US54 ($70) billion — a 9.2 per cent increase — the Pentagon’s way by reducing funding to agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State Department. It’s unclear how much money the president wants to move from the EPA and State Departments’ coffers; the agencies’ combined budgets amount to around $US74 ($96) billion. Officials told The New York Times that the money might also come from social welfare programs, and Trump said that his plan would represent “historic increase in defence spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States of America.”
Let that sink in. President Trump literally wants to take money away from the EPA and the damn diplomatic corps in order to boost America’s “depleted” war machine. It’s widely known that the United States leads the world in defence spending by a lot. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US military budget is three times as large as the second biggest spender: China. It’s almost ten times larger than Russia’s defence budget.
The idea that Trump wants to spend even more on the military is especially ironic given his criticism of defence spending in the past. Last year, Trump even drew attention to a Washington Post report that claimed the Pentagon had buried “evidence of $US125 ($163) billion in bureaucratic waste.” But now the president wants to hand the military another $US54 ($70) billion?
Diplomacy is a good idea. However, a month into his presidency, Trump has all but abandoned the State Department by leaving countless jobs unfilled and sidelining Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Some say that Trump’s neglect of agencies like the State Department represents a larger mission to “dismantle the federal government.” That seems bad!
Protecting the environment is also a good idea. The only problem is that Trump-appointed EPA chief Scott Pruitt has spoken openly about his disdain for the agency he now runs. Pruitt claims that Americans don’t want the EPA, which is a lie. Reallocated funds from the EPA to the military essentially amounts to selling your car’s seat belts in order to buy a rad spoiler.
Helping out other countries is a good idea, as well. Representing about one per cent of the federal budget, foreign aid is a relatively cheap way to achieve America’s policy goals across the globe. President Trump must not agree, though, since his beefy new military budget would use some of that money to invest more in the glowing, green type of power. Trump recently said that the US has “fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity” and that “we’re going to be at the top of the pack.” According to estimates last year, the US is second only to Russia in terms of its nuclear arsenal. Russia has about 300 more than we do.
So it sounds like President Trump is preparing for war. In a sense, it already feels like we’re at war with ourselves. The good news is that the president can only make budget requests; Congress will have to sign off on the line items. The bad news is that the apocalypse is right around the corner. But once the EPA goes away and our diplomatic ties disintegrate, we’ll be living in a toxic wasteland that nobody likes. Maybe then we’ll be thankful for having so many tanks.