Only, part of the family has been feeling disrespected. Congress members want to have some say about wars, at least sometimes, with some wars, when the president belongs to the other party. The most common claim about the legality of war in the U.S. media is that it is illegal unless authorized by Congress. But, in fact, Congress doesn't have the legal power to authorize rape or robbery or dog torture, and war is as illegal as those other things. If Congress will use its power to prevent or end a war, I'm 100% in favor. But the notion that Congress can use its power to make a war legal is a dangerous one.
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has long tried to give presidents more war powers while claiming to do the opposite. And even his claims have nonsensically normalized war. On my youtube you can watch me questioning him at an event at which he faulted Trump for sending missiles into Syria without asking Congress. Could Congress possibly have legalized the crime of sending missiles into Syria, I asked him. He admitted it could not, but returned immediately to the same nonsense. This month, however, he actually introduced a resolution how ever weakly worded to force a vote to end war on Iran a vote that succeeded in the House before being taken in the Senate.
A big focus of the efforts to erase the illegality of recent wars and murders is the notion of "imminent threat." As with many war lies, there is an answer to the question of whether Suleimani was an imminent threat, but it is the wrong question. There were no weapons in Iraq in 2003, but the question of whether there were had nothing to do with the morality or legality of attacking Iraq except in the sense that the disaster would have been even worse had Iraq actually had those weapons. Suleimani was apparently on a peace mission when he was murdered, but the question of what he was up to has nothing to do with the morality or legality of killing him. If he had been indicted for a crime, he could have been arrested and prosecuted. If he was planning more attacks on ISIS, the United States could have stopped taking that personally. If he was planning attacks on U.S. troops, any number of diplomatic steps, including removing those troops from illegal and catastrophic endless occupations, were possible. But a preemptive strike, also known as an aggressive strike, is a crime made to look heroic in movies yet still criminal and insane in real life.
In the mafia, there's never any discussion of the financial cost of taking care of somebody. On the contrary, taking care of him is necessary for the family's interests or for making sure people "fear us," as Senator Murphy wants. If I were to go on CNN and propose educational or green energy or healthcare or housing programs, what's the first question I would be asked?
And if I were instead to propose sending more troops to Iraq, would I ever in a million years be asked that question?
War either costs nothing, or we shout about how much it costs by naming some fraction of military spending, as if the rest of military spending is for something other than war.
I think this is as good a moment as any to tell you my budget idea.
An important job of any U.S. president is to propose an annual budget to Congress. Shouldn't it be a basic job of every presidential candidate to propose one to the public? Isn't a budget a critical moral and political document outlining what chunk of our public treasury should go to education or environmental protection or war?
The basic outline of such a budget could consist of a list or a pie chart communicating in dollar amounts and/or percentages how much government spending ought to go where. It's shocking to me that presidential candidates do not produce these.
As far as I have been able to determine, though it's so absurd as to seem improbable, no non-incumbent candidate for U.S. president has ever produced even the roughest outline of a proposed budget, and no debate moderator or major media outlet has ever publicly asked for one.
There are candidates right now who propose major changes to education, healthcare, environmental, and military spending. The numbers, however, remain vague and disconnected. How much, or what percentage, do they want to spend where?
Some candidates might like to produce a revenue or taxation plan as well. "Where will you raise money?" is as important a question as "Where will you spend money?" But "Where will you spend money?" seems like a basic question that any candidate should be asked.
The U.S. Treasury distinguishes three types of U.S. government spending. The largest is mandatory spending. This is made up largely of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but also Veterans' care and other items. The smallest of the three types is interest on debt. In between is the category called discretionary spending. This is the spending that the Congress decides how to spend each year.
What every presidential candidate ought to produce, at a minimum, is a basic outline of a federal discretionary budget. This would serve as a preview of what each candidate would ask the Congress for as president. If candidates feel they need to produce larger budgets outlining changes to mandatory spending as well, so much the better.
President Trump is the one candidate for president in 2020 who has produced a budget proposal (one for each year he's been in office). As analyzed by the National Priorities Project, Trump's latest budget proposal devoted 57% of discretionary spending to militarism (wars and war preparations). This is despite the fact that this analysis treated Homeland Security, Energy (the Energy Department is largely nuclear weapons), and Veterans Affairs each as separate categories not included under the category of militarism.
The U.S. public, in polling over the years, has tended to have no idea what the budget looks like, and once informed to favor a very different budget from the actual one at the time. I'm curious what each person campaigning for the presidency wants the federal budget to look like. Will they put their money (well, our money) where their mouths are? They say they care about many good things, but will they show us how much they care about each of them?
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