Trump’s Budget Proposal Has The Wrong Priorities
By Tyler Zhu
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
PRESIDENT TRUMP RECENTLY LAID OUT HIS BUDGET PROPOSAL. While it isn’t the final version that will be passed, looking at Trump’s plan is a good way of evaluating what issues he prioritizes and seeing how they align with his campaign focuses.
The most notable part of Trump’s budget plan is his $54 billion increase in military spending — a 10 percent increase to what would be $603 billion. Where there is an increase in the military budget, there are cuts in other agencies, among which include the Environmental Protection Agency (now led by a man who sued it 13 times), the Internal Revenue Service, the State Department, and foreign aid spending. Essentially, there are going to be a lot of resources of a variety of different causes — from clean air and water protection to international development —that will be diverted for “public safety and national security,” as Trump states.
In a speech about the budget proposal’s focus on increased military spending, Trump cited the importance for us to “start winning wars again” and expressed his belief that the United States has a “depleted military.” These statements indicate that Trump does not appear to have a proper grasp of the circumstances surrounding America’s recent international relations history.
America’s most recent war history includes the ongoing War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq, the latter of which had a dealt great political damage to Hillary Clinton during her two respective runs for president in 2008 and 2016. Most Americans today believe that the Iraq War certainly was not a success for the United States, and for good reason. Our objective was to neutralize the threat of Saddam Hussein having WMDs (which he didn’t), and ultimately we destabilized the region in the process our invasion. However, our troops toppled Hussein within 3 weeks of invading the region, indicating that lack of prowess wasn’t why Iraq was ultimately seen as a “lost” war. But Trump’s rhetoric and budget proposal indicates he either does not recognize this distinction, or is simply using derogatory rhetoric to appeal to the public about our supposed combative vulnerability.
The United States already spends almost 3 times as much on military as the 2nd-highest spender in the category.
Implying that this amount of spending isn’t more than adequate enough to have the strongest military in the world would suggest incredible inefficiencies in the funding of the program. In this case, shouldn’t the Trump administration evaluate this supposed bloatedness and make necessary cuts accordingly to maximize our effectiveness to spending ratio on military while also being able to spend on other projects like environmental protections, technological research, and education?
If Trump believes that our conduction of foreign policy in recent years has been a failure, perhaps it has been because our leaders have not approached international situations in the right way.
Trump’s budget proposal has been stated to not be the full version, with plans on infrastructure spending still to be released, but the Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney calls this an “‘An America First’ budget”. Yet, it’s important to consider the magnitude of the aforementioned $54 billion as part of the strategy of implementing this ‘America First’ agenda. As we know, there is an opportunity cost for everything, so what could we have spent this $54 billion on instead? We already know that environmental causes have been direct victims of this budget rebalancing. For instance, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) funding is being cut, which hinders the agency’s work in using satellite service to gather important climate data. This would prevent our capability of doing further comprehensive research on a huge threat to not just American citizens, but the planet as a whole. That’s a pretty devastating cost.
Along with the agencies that are directly facing costs for this budget, there are also hypothetical areas that we could have potentially used this $54 billion on. During his campaign, Bernie Sanders had a tuition-free college plan that was set to cost $75 billion. His plan was to raise taxes on financial speculation to gather the money to pay for this plan. Trump’s budget involves no increases in taxes — just simple redistribution of resources. Yet, the amount of money that Trump is proposing to move to add to the military alone is almost enough to fund tuition-free college, which would be an investment that would lead to a more educated workforce, and thus, a more innovative and productive economy.
Another agency that we could invest in would be NASA — not just for advancements in space exploration, but also for the potential to develop innovative new technology that could revolutionize productivity in a variety of industries. NASA currently has a $19.5 billion budget, but we might not even be able to imagine what it is capable of doing for our society’s technological ability if we were to give the agency a boost in its budget.
These are only a few ideas I have, but there are many more important causes that could bring great benefits for many Americans if we were to divert more attention to them in the form of public funding and investment. Trump has addressed some of these issues throughout his campaign, which certainly suggests he is at least aware of the situation. So if he wants to put “America First”, we must ask ourselves: is the further bloating of an already powerful military the best use of taxpayer dollars in providing Americans with more healthy and prosperous lives?
