Trump Says Military Paid First, Everyone Else Can Wait
While former President Trump assures the military will receive paychecks during a shutdown, as reported by the Financial Times, this isn't surprising. Military budgets are sacrosanct, even if it means starving every other public service. In 2023, for example, the US allocated $886 billion to defense, a figure that dwarfs spending on education, housing, or healthcare. This prioritizes instruments
of war and intervention over the welfare of its own citizens when domestic budgets face artificial austerity. One might wonder if this commitment to ensuring paychecks extends to every essential worker, or if it's reserved for the demographic most crucial to projecting power abroad. It’s almost as if the architects of these shutdowns know exactly whose loyalty they need to retain while the rest of
the country learns to 'tighten its belt.' How many essential services need to be defunded before we recognize the true cost of this shell game?