The “Big Beautiful Bill” federal budget bill passed by House Republicans, which calls for huge increases in defense spending at a time when the U.S. is not at war, reemphasizes the American capitalist system’s flawed priorities. Trump’s BBB bill allocates $144 billion for defense, while slashing $1.6 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP while imposing work requirements and funding cuts. These cuts would deny health coverage to 14 million Americans by 2034 and leave 3 million households without food. Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP plan to gut social safety net programs, which are already suboptimal, at a time when poverty and homelessness are surging. Military expansion always trumps domestic needs, as inequality keeps growing. In 2024, the U.S. poverty rate rose to 12.9%, afflicting 42 million people, while homelessness hit a record 771,000 people, an 18% increase from 2023, including 150,000 children. Why are billions funneled into defense when so many ordinary Americans face economic hardship?
Poor? Homeless? Get with the Program
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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The applicant depicted certainly seems more than capable of producing weapons horrifically expensively, in minimal numbers and with effectiveness at least two technological generations behind those of self-avowed “peer adversaries” … a robust “tradition” that has been clearly demonstrated in the cooperative Biden-Trump, latest US version of “destroy a country for profit and maybe total nuclear destruction” gambit in Ukraine.
“the American capitalist system’s flawed priorities.”
This will seem pedantic, but the system works quite well. If you are an American capitalist with a capitalist’s priorities. And what are those priorities? To obtain as much wealth (and power) as possible. To what end? To obtain more wealth (and more power). As C. Montgomery Burns once said of his great fortune, “I’d give it all up for a little more.”
The Republicans and the democrats who are in the figurehead positions (senators, representatives, presidents, vice presidents, cabinet members) all understand how things are. As George Carlin pointed, all those many years ago, “you don’t need a formal conspiracy when like interests converge.”