Food stamps cost the federal government 70 billion a year.Section 8 costs 35 billion a year.In Trumps first budget he wants to increase defense spending around 50 billion and wants to increase it a lot more in the coming years.A complete elimination of food stamps and section 8 and a small spirit tax wont even cover the cost of the hundreds of billions more Trump wants to increase defense spending.And we haven't even gotten to the tax cuts and infrastructure yet.
A socialist style politician is coming if something isn't done to address this disparity between wall street and the real economy. 401K's are meaningless to the unemployed and underemployed. So are real estate values. So is damn near everything else. People will make their political choices based on their material wealth in most cases. They won't be thinking about the more nuanced loss of individual rights. This infrastructure rebuild is the best fix to get people back to jobs that pay well. Where will the money come from? Where does any of it come from? Thin air? What's another trillion at this point, and I'm being serious. These numbers are so large they've lost all meaning. I still say a tax, if it's presented in a common sense fashion, will be accepted, but whatever they come up with, republicans better come up with something on this, or 2020 is going to be a Hindenburg type election for them.
If we got our troops out of Afghanistan, we would save enough to pay for the wall and Trump's infrastructure. If we cut illegal immigration and muslim refugee programs , we would save billions more. The money is there and it doesn't require tax increases. Obama doubled the federal debt and no one peeped. Now suddenly we can't afford to rebuild bridges, or the wall. We do seem to have all the money the Pentagon wants however.
Every dollar the government spends on infrastructure is paid for by taxes and every time they spend my tax dollars that's just another dollar I don't have to spend. If we need a bridge build it. But don't build it because we need a job. We need a job because I can't buy anything because I spent it all on a bridge.
It's all fine and good, but in 10 years, there will be no progress made. A trillion. Whoopie do. Let's see how many potholes that bill prevents. The answer will be ZERO.
More high speed rail.....?? Obama large re-build bill in 2009 had billions for the same rail What happen to that money (Illinois News Network) — Amtrak riders are still waiting for higher train speeds along the Chicago-to-St. Louis route. Officials promised travel at up to 110 mph along the line as part of a nearly $2-billion dollar project largely funded by federal economic stimulus dollars awarded under then-President Barack Obama. IDOT previously said speeds of up to 110 mph would take about an hour off the commute time between Chicago and St. Louis. Topping out at 90 mph would save about 15 minutes on the average trip. 2 billion to save 15 minutes
Amtrak is a fucking disaster, and has been. How much money could be saved if that government-subsidized POS was just terminated? Who the FUCK needs to travel by train, and WHY?!? Amtrak is triple the ticket price as an airline flight, and takes 2-4X the time to get the destination. What is the point of it? The romance of the train?!?