Republicans have blown this deficit up to places one couldn’t even imagine it could go: a statement by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) who still voted for the 2019 military budget of approximately 716 billion dollars.

While the press – and, correspondingly, the people who rely on the press for information, that’s us – have been watching the Trump Administration put children in cages, a bi-partisan Congress has voted for a new military budget. A military budget that includes a boost in defense spending of approximately 82 billion dollars for next year. To put that in perspective, the increase just voted on is bigger than the entire Russian military budget which was 69.2 billion dollars last year (according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute).

Think about that for a second, the increase of the United States’ military budget, next year over this year, is bigger than Russia’s entire military budget. Lest you think that this is all the nasty Republicans’ fault, the 2019 military budget was a bi-partisan effort with only ten Senators voting against it and two of the Ney voters were Republicans (Mike Lee and Paul Rand). I am glad to say that both of California’s Senators, as well as Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, voted Nay. I wasn’t surprised that Bernie voted Nay, but I am surprised Cory Booker voted Yea for the increase, seeing as how he is rumored to be running for President. 

It is interesting to note that the Department of Education estimates that free college – belittled by much of the political establishment, on both sides of the aisle, as being unaffordable –  would cost about 62.6 billion dollars, about 20 billion dollars less than the one year increase for our already bloated military. In my opinion, this is a good measure of our National Values and it is hard for me not to get enraged.