Now, I don’t think it’s controversial to note that many Americans here at home are not doing very well. You can pick whatever problem you think is the gravest: lack of wage increases and wage stagnation; the need to work multiple jobs if you have children, especially even if you’re a married couple — the fact that one parent, if they want, can’t stay home and take care of their children any longer, what was a foundational property of American life for decades and that no longer is the case. It’s gone.
There aren’t enough good jobs, so people have to work two jobs just to sustain their family, to pay other people to raise their kids, and to pay other people to take care of their elderly parents. Huge numbers of people are without health care. Some of those people without health care got Medicaid benefits during the COVID pandemic on the grounds that, ‘look, if we’re going to have this pandemic with a very serious disease that can kill a lot of people, then we ought to give people Medicaid’. Those people, however, are about to lose their Medicaid by the millions — not Ukrainian citizens, but American citizens.
Here you can see, from AP this week, “Millions to Lose Medicaid Coverage Under Congress’s Plan”. The AP reports: “Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday”. It has money for Ukraine, but not for your fellow citizens to have health care. “The legislation will sunset a requirement that the COVID-19 public health emergency that prohibited states from booting people off Medicaid.”
I really just want anyone to explain to me in clear language how it’s justifiable that the United States is spending $100 billion on a war on the other side of the world where there are no vital U.S. interests, while people at home are suffering in all sorts of ways.