In any normal presidential administration, a deal that can be struck with bipartisan support would be cause for celebration. For any normal president, being able to address the concerns of the majority of people he was elected to represent (and not just those who voted for him), would be a happy day, indeed.
This isn’t a normal presidential administration, and this isn’t a normal president.
Just as a reminder, the U.S. military is the most highly-funded military in the world. In fact, our military budget is more than the next seven countries with the highest spending combined, which includes #2 China, #3 Russia, #4 Saudi Arabia, #5 France, #6 England, #7 India, and #8 Germany. If all seven of those countries banded together against the U.S., their combined military would not be better funded than ours.
There have been no “years of depletion.”
As for the non-military budget increases so vexing to Trump and other Republicans, those unnecessary line items that Democrats so stubbornly insisted on, they include such trivial things as disaster relief for places like Puerto Rico (where one-third of residents are still without power but deliveries of food and water by FEMA have stopped), funding for the opioid crisis, and spending on childcare.
‘The massive two-year budget deal proposed by Senate leaders Wednesday raises budget caps by $300 billion in the next two years, increases the debt ceiling and offer up nearly $90 billion in disaster relief for hurricane-ravaged Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.
‘Exact spending would be left to the appropriations committees, but included in the funding is $10 billion to invest in infrastructure, $2.9 billion for child care and $3 billion to combat opioid and substance abuse.’
The fight continues, as the two-year budget deal only prevents another government shutdown for six weeks, at which point immigration and DACA will be back on the table. But for now, a budget resolution has passed and Trump’s need for a shutdown has passed.
So why is he still complaining?
Featured image via Getty/Pool
