When it comes to food stamps (aka Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) for poverty stricken Americans — 80% of whom are children, the disabled or elderly—President Trump is a tough fiscal conservative.  This Christmas season, Trump announced he’s taking food away from 700,000 of them, which will save about $1 billion per year. Self-described fiscal conservatives are cheering. 

But when it comes to lavishing funding on the Pentagon’s huge corporate contractors, Trump has been the furthest thing away from fiscally conservative.  Last year, he proposed an increase of $34 billion per year to a $4.7 trillion 2020 budget, including funding Trump’s Space Force toy.

To recap, Trump is saving $1 billion per year on food stamps with the one hand, while going on a $34 billion per year Pentagon spending spree with the other hand.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is contemporary fiscal conservatism, where cruelty is the point, not actual fiscal restraint.

Contrary to Trump claims that President Obama “devastated” the military, the U.S. doesn’t need to play “catch-up” on spending. It spends more on military than the next seven more armed nations, COMBINED. Clearly, we are armed to the teeth so that chicken hawks like Trump and McConnell can have their hair triggers at the ready any time they feel the urge to send other people’s kids in front of bullets and IEDs.  

At the same time, the Pentagon has not exactly shown itself to be the most trustworthy and efficient of public agencies.  It was recently caught hiding an audit that found about $125 billion in wasteful spending. The Washington Post reported what the Pentagon and fiscal conservatives wouldn’t:

“The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.”

So, how do politicians and their constituents justify taking from the poorest Americans while giving lavishly to the richest corporate Pentagon contractors?  Three words: “Support. Our. Troops.”

Uttering those three magical words gets most politicians on both the right and left to obediently write deficit-financed blank checks to corporate contractors, lest they be accused of being anti-troops. 

The “support our troops” mega-brand has been built in no small part by Pentagon military recruitment budgets that ensure there is an endless stream of shallow paid-patriotism sloganeering at all types of community gatherings, particularly sports events. The Washington Post explains:

“In 2015, an oversight report by Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona revealed the NFL as one of several leagues that accepted Department of Defense funds to stage military tributes, a practice known as paid patriotism. (The league eventually gave back more than $700,000, drawing praise from Flake.) Joe Lockhart, a former Clinton administration staffer, had just joined the NFL as a spokesman when the scandal broke.

‘As I dug into that a little bit, the National Guard, which is probably the most aggressive advertiser at NFL games, talked about how it was the single best recruitment vehicle they had,’ said Lockhart, who left the NFL last year. ‘Which is just interesting. I think there is a connection. . . . Football Sundays have a connection to what a lot of people view as patriotism.’

The service members presented at games can feel like props, part of a show. The camouflage uniforms and accessories can cheapen the sacrifice of soldiers and prohibit critical thinking about the military.

‘It almost feels like it’s a mandatory patriotism that is pushed down the throats of anybody who wants to attend a game,” said former Army Ranger and author Rory Fanning, who has become a vocal critic of America’s wars. ‘By trotting out veterans, patting them on the back, I don’t think it does justice to the actual experience of veterans, particularly over the last 18 years. There certainly isn’t an opportunity for veterans to talk about their experiences in combat. So many veterans don’t feel like the heroes the NFL wants to present them as.””

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for “supporting our troops,” at least in ways that are actually relevant and meaningful.  Say a sincere, heartfelt thanks. Provide good pay and benefits. Supply the training and equipment soldiers need.  Fund lifelong help after they serve.  Most importantly, keep them out of unnecessary armed conflicts.

But writing blank checks to corporate contractors is not on that list.  The reality is, too much of that $4.7 trillion annual Pentagon budget has nothing to do with troop-supporting functions, such as the $125 billion in covered-up waste. 

So how about some bipartisan cooperation for dramatically reducing that largest of government boondoggles, the $4.7 trillion per year Pentagon budget.  How about putting a little “support our taxpayers” in the mix?