$3.5 trillion for jobs and families is cheap. Pass it.

Two people who know better and should be ashamed of themselves.

Have you been watching all the squabbling that’s been going on over the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion jobs and families bill congress is trying to pass?  President Biden met with two dozen Democratic member of congress today, including Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, trying to bridge the gaps between the House and the Senate on one hand, and progressives and centrists on the other. 

What’s at stake?  Oh…just the funding we need to repair bridges that are falling down, roads that are crumbling, plus funding for airports and trains and the rest of that pesky mass transit stuff. Not to mention funding for universal pre-school; child care; college tuition; paid medical leave; continuing the increased child tax credit; Medicare enhancements to cover dental, hearing, and eye care; extending subsidies for Obamacare; covering healthcare for people who live in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid; lowering drug costs; and a smattering of programs to address climate change and a program to provide green cards to millions of immigrants and their families.

This is what they’re calling the “social safety net” bill, folks.  Does that sound like a “safety net” to you?  Helping cover the cost of health care for millions of Americans in the middle of a fucking pandemic?  Keeping bridges that carry tens of thousands of cars and trucks every day from falling into rivers and gorges?  Helping commuters get to work?

We’re talking about paying for stuff that collectively we ought to be paying for already, if it weren’t for the 40-year campaign Republicans have been on to reduce taxes and bleed the government dry.  That’s the problem.  We’re talking about this stuff like it’s extra, or special, or unusual, because we’ve bought into the Republican argument that government can’t do anything right and that the market ought to take care of all this stuff. 

You remember the market, don’t you?  That’s the system that makes drugs and health insurance so expensive nobody can afford them.  The market is what senior citizens relied on until we passed Medicare back in the 60’s and started providing health care for the Americans that had worked their entire lives and helped build this country, only to be kicked to the curb when they got old.  They couldn’t afford to go to the doctor, families couldn’t afford to pay for them to go into long-term care when they needed it.  Because they were supposed to depend on the market.

See, what Republicans want to do is cut taxes on rich people, cut taxes on corporations, cut taxes on unearned income like profits from owning stocks and bonds, so the rich people they care about can go out and buy bigger houses, more second and third homes, cars that cost two and three hundred grand…you get the picture.  And fuck everybody else.  Let them struggle to pay for child care while they go out and work low wage jobs that won’t even cover the rent and put food on the table, much less pay for somebody to watch the kids while they’re out there sweating away cleaning McMansions and shuffling burgers through the drive-through window to the rest of the suckers who are out there working their asses off and believing the Republican bullshit that this is the way it’s always been, and this is the way it’s going to be.

Well, fuck them.  Fuck Mitch McConnell and fuck Joe Manchin and fuck Krysten Sinema and fuck all the Republicans who are treating these spending bills like they’re poison.  You want to know what they’re doing at the same time they’re screaming bloody murder about paying for children’s pre-K education and free lunch programs? 

They’re passing a defense budget that’s going to cost us either $705 billion, or $715 billion, or $740 billion, or $750 billion, depending on who’s counting the bloated dollars that are destined to be pissed away on boondoggles like the F-35 fighter and another aircraft carrier not even the Navy wants and we certainly don’t need.

The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and the $3.5 trillion jobs and families bill is scheduled to be spent over 10 years.  That’s $100 billion a year on roads and bridges and $350 billion a year on feeding and educating kids and taking care of old people and people who need health care.

$750 billion a year on “defense” and $350 billion a year on people.

You want to know what we’ll spend on defense over the same 10 years?  Over 7 trillion dollars.  You don’t figure we can afford to spend half of that sum doing stuff we know we need to be doing like repairing bridges and helping families pay for child care?  Give me a break.

Let me tell you just a teeny bit about the infamous F-35 “Lightning” fighter.  It doesn’t fly as fast as it was supposed to.  It can’t be flown in bad weather, but that’s okay, because enemies don’t attack when it’s raining, right?  It’s not as stealthy as it was supposed to be.  It’s terrible at “dog-fights” with enemy aircraft.  It can’t be flown long distances on combat missions, but that’s okay, because we’ll just use it close to home. It isn’t able to carry all of the weapons it was originally intended to carry. And it can’t be deployed without a factory-full of spare parts and technicians and specialists to fix it when it breaks.

You want to know how much this thing costs?  Well, that’s a little tough, because Lockheed, the manufacturer, wants you to think they’ve gotten the plane down to $80 million or so a copy.  But if you add in the cost of the engine…yes, the engine…and if you add in the cost of developing the thing…it’s been in development since the 1990’s…the cost shoots up to $140 million each.

But it’s the cost of the F-35 over the so-called “lifetime of the program” where it really gets cute.  That’s the cost of developing the thing, buying them, and then using the things for stuff like…I don’t know…defending the country?  That sound right?  The fact is, the F-35 has been flown in combat only a few times – by the Marines in 2018, and by the Air Force in 2019 to take out an ISIS tunnel network in Iraq.  It was such a big deal, flying the thing against an enemy, it was covered as a news story.  And the last time I looked, ISIS wasn’t exactly deploying air-defense systems to shoot down our jets.  It was hiding in tunnels. 

Anyway, back to “lifetime of the program” cost:  It’s $1.7 trillion.  And get this.  Of that number, $1.3 trillion is so called “sustainment” costs.  That means paying for upkeep, repairs, fuel, upgrades, fixes to problems, that kind of stuff.  That’s 75 percent of the cost of the plane.  It would be like you buying a Honda for $40,000, and then spending another $30,000 to keep the thing on the road with gas and oil and trips to the dealer to fix it every time something broke.

So while Mitch and Joe and Kristin and the rest of them are whining and complaining about how much it’s going to cost to send kids to pre-school and pay tuition at junior colleges and pay for seniors to get their goddamned cavities filled, they’re just fine with spending $7 trillion on flying train-wrecks like the F-35 and building new aircraft carriers nobody wants, not even the Navy.

This is what’s come from spending the last 40 years letting Republicans cut taxes on rich people and cut programs that help poor people while they’re all too happy to throw not just billions, but trillions at pieces of crap like the F-35 “Lightning” fighter that can’t be flown around thunderstorms because its systems can’t take flying close to lightning. 

And every time Democrats want to do something reasonable like pay for infrastructure for the first time in a couple of decades, all you can hear is the screeching and moaning and complaining coming from not just Republicans, but conservative Democrats who should know better.

Don’t listen to them.  Put some steel in your spine and pass the infrastructure bill and pass the families and jobs bill, and while you’re at it, deep-six the goddamned filibuster and pass the new voting bill so there will be at least a few speed bumps in the way of Republicans as they try to steal the next election and the one after that and the one after that. 

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