Tell Me What You Value
If the current debates in Washington tell us anything, it's that as a nation we prioritize and value the wrong things.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
Show Me Your Values
In my latest MSNBC column, I wrote about Washington’s deeply messed up priorities.
Joe Biden once famously said “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” Over the past week, Congress has depressingly proved the president was on to something.
Though Democrats are tying themselves in knots over a 10-year $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package -- and Republicans are uniformly opposing it -- on Sept. 23, the House of Representatives, with little rancor or controversy, passed a $768 billion package of goodies for the Pentagon.
Assuming the defense budget doesn’t go down (and it rarely does), over 10 years that would mean almost $8 trillion to the Pentagon. That would be more than double the cost of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, which has been billed as a historic expansion of America’s social safety net.
Even in 2021, as Congress is considering historic pieces of progressive legislation, Washington still values defense dollars -- for wars that America shouldn’t and likely won’t fight -- over prioritizing the needs of the American people.
Among the more wasteful nuggets in the House defense bill is authorization to purchase 85 F-35 fighters, an aircraft that has been called a “rathole” and may never be fully ready for combat. There are also billions for a new ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is estimated to cost at least $264 billion over its lifetime. According to Mike Rogers of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Armed Service Committee, the bill is "laser-focused on preparing our military to prevail in a conflict with China."
My question, however, is: what about preparing America for the economic and political challenges of the 21st century? At the same time that Congress is nickel-and-diming the fight against climate change, child poverty, and reducing health care costs, we continue to plunge billions into military platforms we don’t need for wars we shouldn't and likely won’t wage.
Consider, for example, an issue like child care. If you’re a working parent (or have been), you likely take for granted that care for your young child is going to be exceedingly expensive and hard to find. Indeed, when it comes to child care, the United States is a global outlier.
I will never fully understand how this isn’t a national scandal. A child’s first few years are, when it comes to personal development, among the most important. Yet, as a society, we’ve decided that prizing the best possible outcomes for our youngest and most vulnerable is not a priority. Put aside the moral failing of such national decision-making, what about the economic cost? What is the long-term damage to the country when millions of young people are starting life with one hand tied behind their back? What is lost when millions of women can’t work because they have no cost-effective way to care for their young children?
The benefits of subsidized child care or universal pre-K should be obvious. Not only do they save working-class families thousands of dollars a year, but they ensure that kids are entering elementary school at a far better starting point.
As part of the Biden administration's Build Back Better plan, child care would be free for low-earning families and would cost no more than 7 percent of family income for “those earning up to double a state’s median income.” It would also provide universal pre-school for all children ages 3 and 4 and increase the pay for child care workers and pre-school teachers. With all we know about child development and the challenges of paying for child care, that this isn’t already national policy is, in itself, a scandal.
But, there’s no guarantee that this becomes law — now that Senators Manchin and Sinema have decided that the Democrat’s budget reconciliation package has to be close to their arbitrary number of $1.5 trillion. After weeks of saying that he didn’t want to focus on a topline number because the issue should be what America needs, Manchin has picked a number out of a proverbial hat. Now trillions will be cut to appease him. “Spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” said Manchin recently. I would argue that the definition of fiscal insanity is not investing in the country's future, particularly at a time when interest rates are incredibly low, and it’s as good a time as any to borrow money for long-term priorities.
The Foundations of National Power
At its core, the problem about the current debate in Washington is not just that we prioritize the wrong things as a nation; we’ve lost sight of what national security truly means. Is America secure if it can potentially launch nukes against Beijing or fly air sorties against Chinese aircraft? I think it’s pretty dubious that this makes one American safer. Indeed, the foundations of America’s power cannot — and never have been — found in our military arsenals.
“Our national security requirements must be viewed in the context of our overall national well-being,” or so said George H.W. Bush in his 1993 National Security Strategy (NSS). President Obama’s 2010 (NSS) took a similar position: “Our national security begins at home. What takes place within our borders has always been the source of our strength, and this is even truer in an age of interconnection.” America’s strength in the earliest days of the Cold War came not just from the progress we’d made in developing far deadlier weapons than our rivals but in creating economic opportunity and security for the American people. The link between strength at home and strength overseas has long been an article of faith among America’s leaders. Quite clearly, we’ve lost sight of that national imperative.
As my friend Micah Zenko and I wrote several years ago, “A country in which its citizens see their wages go down, their health get worse, their children receive a subpar education, and the infrastructure around them crumble can hardly feel secure—no matter how effective its armed forces may be or how many nuclear-tipped missiles it deploys.”
Yet, the military inputs of national power rather than investments at home — which Americans want and need — receive predominant attention. And let’s be clear: the blame for this isn’t just with Manchin, Sinema, and the Republicans. The House authorized $25 billion more in annual spending than the White House requested. An amendment to trim the overall bill by 10 percent received a meager 86 votes. A majority of Democrats were happy to vote in favor of the legislation.
Don’t get me wrong, $1.5 trillion in spending on domestic priorities is a lot of money. So too is $1 trillion on infrastructure spending and another $1.9 trillion on COVID relief. Whatever bill ends up being negotiated by Congress will make an enormous difference in the lives of millions of Americans.
But $1.5 trillion is not $3.5 trillion.
With the latter, there is the potential to do so much more — to ensure universal pre-K, subsidized child care, paid family leave, an expanded child tax credit, tuition-free community college, higher subsidies on health care, and finally, a real investment in the most significant long-term challenge facing the nation: climate change. Some of these programs will be funded — and some will not. An incremental success story is nothing to sneeze at, but the legislative wrangling in Congress is a tragic reminder that our priorities and values as a nation remain fundamentally misplaced.
What’s Going On?
COVID cases are dramatically declining
More great news: the World Health Organization has approved the first malaria vaccine. This has the potential to save countless lives.
I’m sure Kyrsten Sinema thinks she knows what she’s doing, but it’s increasingly hard to see how the politics of opposing President Biden’s agenda adds up for her.
Paul Kane tries to read Joe Manchin’s mind. It won’t make progressives very happy.
Great piece on the spurt of musical creativity that defined the last days of The Beatles.
Musical Interlude
Obviously, I’m going to post the Beatles rooftop concert. Duh