09/04/2025
Fun fact: On September 10th 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced in that the Defense Department couldn't account for 2.3 TRILLION dollars in transactions. Something happened the next day and a lot of folks forgot about it.
As we are facing down an unnecessary war with Iran and a potential "first ever" 1 trillion dollar defense budget, let's take a look at what we could do here at home instead of throwing money at an unaccountable Defense Department...
If we just take the 2.3 trillion ole Rumsfeld was referring to (and let's be honest, that money wasn't lost. It was laundered and moved around to pet projects, shell companies, & all sorts of nasty things) and base projects on it, it's quite stunning what could be accomplished.
Adjusting for inflation, 2.3 trillion would equate to around 4.13 trillion today. That's a lot of money. With that we could "fix" every road system in the US. The estimates to conduct repairs where needed and reconstruction where failing are around 1.8 to 4 trillion...
A high-speed rail system that connects every major city coast to coast would run us somewhere in the ballpark of 1 to 2.5 trillion. We wouldn't have to rely on failing airline infrastructure, vaccinated pilots dying in the skies, or diversity queens pulling an "oopsie" on a hard landing to travel cross-country.
With 2 trillion, we could reduce the opioid and fentanyl crisis that's gutting our people down to negligible levels over 10 years (the economic impact of this crisis costs the economy an estimated 2.7 trillion each year in lives lost and quality of life reduction). Make no mistake, there's not a magic switch we can throw to suddenly stop the crisis. Government and law enforcement agencies absolutely could quickly stop most of the trafficking of these poisons if the incentive was there, but the cycle of addiction takes time to address and heal (hence the 10 years).
So maybe we pump the brakes on killing our Sons and Daughters and burning piles of cash with another pointless war that benefits no one but a few elite people and organizations?
We can't buy a bag of groceries for less than 30 bucks, this isn't the future we want for our kids.