The Real Deficit Is War, Not Welfare

We’re told again and again that the U.S. national deficit is a result of runaway “entitlements,” as if Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are some kind of reckless indulgence. That story gets airtime on every debate stage and in every policy room. But it’s a lie.

The truth? Our deepest deficits—fiscal, moral, and cultural—are not rooted in how we care for our people. They’re rooted in how we go to war. I’ve seen it since I was a kid. War after war. Bullshit on bullshit. Treating us like fools.

Wars We Can’t Afford, Paid With Money We Don’t Have

Since 2001, the United States has spent more than $8 trillion on post-9/11 wars. Iraq. Afghanistan. Syria. Drone campaigns. Endless military presences in over 80 countries. We put it all on the national credit card. No wartime tax. No draft. No sacrifice. The last one is the tell. No sacrifice? That’s not war. That’s a Presidents Day Sale at War-mart Unless you count soldiers’ lives and veterans’ broken bodies. The soldiers make the sacrifice for all of us. Thank you for your service some sort atonement for our national shame.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, just the interest on our war debt will cost us $6.5 trillion by 2050. That’s money that doesn’t build schools, roads, or broadband. It doesn’t fund Medicare or Social Security. It doesn’t even keep us safer.

It’s money that evaporates into desert air and defense contractors’ profits. It’s the con. The pea in the shell. Only this shell game is at warp speed. We don’t have a chance to win or even spot the shift.

Social Security Is Not the Villain

Social Security is funded by payroll taxes. It’s actuarially managed. It runs its own trust fund. It’s not debt.

Yes, we need to make adjustments—raise the payroll tax cap, modernize the age curve—but the idea that grandma’s check is bankrupting the nation is offensive. You know what’s bankrupting us?

A Pentagon budget of $886 billion a year and counting. More than the next 10 countries combined. And the costs don’t end when the bombs stop falling. We drop 30,000 bombs from 30,000 and fly home again, jet stream warriors on invisible wings. We raise our flag in arrogance and whip lash salutes. Fear us, we say. But from what I see I say we should fear ourselves, toddlers with power is what it feels like some days.

The Long Tail of War

Veterans’ care. PTSD. Prosthetics. Burn pit injuries. These costs last generations. The VA budget has tripled since 2001. And we haven’t even touched on the psychological and spiritual debt—what it means to train a generation for perpetual combat. We break minds with our pointless wars. But we don’t care about that. You see them hobbling in streets and sleeping in parks, but we don’t care about that. We hug flags like that’s enough, performative patriotism, then tip our hat and go play golf.

We’ve built an empire of war. We fight wars like we used to build railroads: on speculation, at scale, with no clear exit plan. We don’t win them. We don’t pay for them. And then we blame the poor. We take food out the mouths of children. We send the sick down to the river to die.

Deficits as Moral Failure

The national debt is not a spreadsheet problem. It’s a priority problem.

We spend trillions destroying lives overseas and call it security.

We struggle to fund healthcare and call it unsustainable.

When we choose bombs over books, jets over jobs, missiles over medicine. We create a deficit of trust, of compassion, of reason, then send the Marines into LA to restore order. That’s the real deficit. The one we can’t afford. The deficit of the heart. A nation sick with decades of war fever.

The Fix Isn’t Cutting Care. It’s Cutting War.

End the forever wars. Audit the Pentagon. Cap the contracts. Rein in the military-industrial complex.

God, we’ve been saying that for 70-years. But there’s no sell-by date on greed. The war cats are always hungry. A broken promise is cheaper than a rubber bullet. Let’s end forever wars, then have military parade to celebrate it.

I’ve got a better idea for the richest nation in the history of humankind. Fund what heals.