When did $5 billion become chump change?
If I had five billion dollars I could buy:
– the L.A. Lakers pro basketball team
– the Chicago Cubs pro baseball team
– the Toronto Maple Leafs professional hockey team
– the Solomon Islands
– an Airbus A380 that is the largest passenger airplane in the world
On top of these purchases I could put in an order for a F-35C Lightning II fighter jet currently under development, and still have several millions left over.
Yet, Republican supporters of Trump’s border wall insist five billion is nothing more than chump change.
The National Institutes of Health would disagree, given the fact that only 10% of their research projects on diseases such as cancer, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s are fully funded.
So would the National Parks Service in fighting wild fires and FEMA that is without sufficient funds to continue offering relief to victims of natural disasters.
Our government does in fact throw away billions of dollars like it really is chump change, especially in payments to military contractors who build planes that don’t always fly and ships we don’t need.
But the idea that adding to this disgraceful waste of taxpayer money is nothing to worry about is not just absurd, it is immoral.
That is why Republicans supporting Trump’s wall are the public face of an entire political party that has lost its mind, abandoned its basic principles, and gone over to the dark side of morality.
Calling the shut down of the government that has needlessly inflicted hardship on millions of innocent Americans just to allow Trump to make good on a stupid promise he made to a minority of voters insane is to be too kind.
But I suppose when you’re willing to abuse babies and children by taking them away from their parents just to make a political point, there really is no limit to your moral depravity.
The thing that makes me sick and angry and disgusted is the fact that Donald Trump is not President of the United States.
By his own choice he is president to a minority of Republican voters who hate Democrats so much they are willing to sacrifice the well being of the entire country to stick a finger in their eye.
That’s why Mitch McConnell won’t bring allow votes on bills that would reopen the government. He knows they would pass and Trump would lose.
Preventing that from happening is his only priority, the nation be damned.
The reason Democrats cannot give in to Trump and the Republican Senate is simple: The United States does not negotiate with terrorists.
That is what Trump and his Republican supporters are acting like – terrorists holding American citizens hostage.
To give in would mean seeing this same scene played out again and again over the next two years.
Five billion dollars is not chump change, and this fight is bigger than the money involved.
This is a flash point over the kind of nation we are, the values we hold, and whether or not the spirit of our democracy is still alive.
Donald Trump doesn’t care about any of that, and neither do Republicans who support him, and that is why the majority of us now face a test of our will.
We must confront a man and his party who together pose a genuine threat to the democracy we believe in and must now fight to save. It is a fight not of our own choosing, but that is often the way battles with consequences arise.
The reality is, we have no choice but to stand together with steel resolve to defeat Trump and his Republican ban of thieves who are betraying the values we still hold.
linnposts.com 