Trump Administration spending priorities are wrong

The author questions the focus on increased military spending over domestic needs like food, medicine and housing.The piece criticizes prioritizing funding for nuclear weapons and ICE over education and health care.It argues that the U.S. military budget is already bloated and that funds should go toward infrastructure and research.The author expresses concern over a potential conflict with Venezuela and a lack of diplomatic solutions.Have we learned nothing from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Here we go again.

It appears Pete Hegseth wants to alienate America’s longstanding allies and “rebuild” our military yet again. If Donald Trump is the “peace president,” as he so often claims, why pursue another avalanche of military spending? We’re talking billions piled onto an already bloated budget while millions of Americans go without food, without medicine and without stable housing.

Washington won’t fund SNAP during a shutdown, but it will cut a check for a brand-new nuclear arsenal without blinking. We can’t build a health care system that doesn’t bankrupt people, but we can crank out more tanks, helicopters and missiles to kill anyone who dares disagree with us. And now we’re supposed to believe the administration’s foreign policy strategy is to show the world “who needs whom” by threatening invasions for natural resources?

We can’t raise the minimum wage to keep pace with the price of basic goods, but we can apparently afford a gaudy new ballroom that nobody asked for — except one man. Kings build ballrooms. Presidents build countries.

Teachers are asked to buy their own classroom supplies out of already stretched salaries, yet we’re perfectly fine funding ICE, in my view, a paramilitary force, with a budget larger than the Coast Guard‘s to tackle unarmed men, women and children. It seems to me that the “Don’t Tread on Me” crowd has suddenly gone quiet.

And what happened to the fiscal conservatives? We’re conjuring billions out of thin air and not a peep from most — apparently deficits only matter when the money feeds children instead of weapons programs.

Our military budget already stands at $850 billion, yet we lag behind adversaries managing to out-innovate us with half the cost. Hegseth, at Trump’s direction, now wants to restart nuclear testing. For what? Are we at war with anyone? Since when is “more nuclear bombs” the correct answer to any modern policy question?

I believe we need modern infrastructure. High-speed rail. Universal rural broadband. Strong hospitals, universities and research institutions pushing life-saving science forward. Instead, we’re pouring money into apocalyptic weapons that can only be used once — and end civilization if they ever are. Who wins that scenario? Not humanity. Maybe the cockroaches.

We seem poised to stumble into another needless war — this time with Venezuela — because a brand-new phrase, “narco-terrorist boats,” suddenly appeared and is now treated like a national emergency. Is that the bar for sending American sons and daughters into the meat grinder? No diplomatic options? No congressional approval? Just a president deciding unilaterally to wage war because he can?

Have we truly learned nothing from Iraq or Afghanistan?

Justin Wagner, Mercer