Trump’s policies are self-serving and harmful

Trump’s policies are self-serving and harmful

Bob Sheak, May 11, 2026

Arlene Sheak edits

Here are some examples.

#1 – As U.S. Debt Hits a Worrying Milestone, Washington Barely Notices

This is the title of Tony Romm’s article, New York Times, May 7 2026

(https://nytimes.com/2026/05/07/business/us-debt-trump-policies-budget.html). Here’s some of what he writes.

“The debt is outgrowing the size of America’s economy. The president’s policies could accelerate the country’s fiscal headaches, experts say, unless policymakers intervene.

The debt problem.

Romm writes this. “The U.S. government learned last week that it may have reached an unfortunate milestone: The size of its debt surpassed the nation’s total economic output.

“It was a striking imbalance, according to early estimates, one that the country has experienced only in rare circumstances — briefly during the pandemic, and in the aftermath of World War II.”

The source of the problem.

“U.S. debt has soared in recent years because of a mismatch between federal spending and tax revenue, one complicated by a rapidly aging population, which has driven up costs across government.

The problem increases.

“For economists, the fear is that these conditions are inching the United States toward a fiscal crisis, one in which its debt is so great that the country can’t easily afford to pay the rising interest on it. But their warnings have long gone unheeded in Washington, calcifying the strains on the government’s balance sheet in ways that President Trump’s agenda is expected to exacerbate.”

Republican-controlled Congress ignores the problem

“Despite winning a congressional majority, Republicans have cut little in spending over the past year. With the few savings they did achieve, they put that money toward offsetting a fraction of the cost of Mr. Trump’s tax cuts, which are still expected to add more than $4 trillion to the debt in the coming years.”

Evidence

“Those fiscal risks aren’t yet fully realized in the total federal debt held by the public, which topped about $31.26 trillion in March, federal records show. By comparison, the nation’s nominal gross domestic product, a measure of its output using current dollars, reached $31.21 trillion in the 12-month period ending in March, according to data released last Thursday and analyzed by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which supports deficit reduction.”

The looming threat of a “debt spiral”

“Marc Goldwein, its senior vice president, said the symbolic milestone helped to illustrate the fiscal risk facing the United States. If its debt continues to grow faster than the economy, he said, it will only become more expensive for the government to borrow money, as investors demand higher yields on bonds to finance that debt.

“‘When that happens, at some point, you’re in this debt spiral,’ Mr. Goldwein said.

““The only way to stop it is through some kind of big shock to the system.’

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The debt will be higher at the end of this fiscal year

“…the Trump administration itself has recently estimated that the annual imbalance will still reach around $2 trillion by the end of fiscal 2026, which could mark an increase from a year earlier.

“Adding to the challenges, the U.S. government is just beginning to refund billions of dollars collected from Mr. Trump’s once-vaunted, and now illegal, global tariffs, with the first checks expected to reach businesses next week. That could further rattle the nation’s finances, just as the Trump administration simultaneously confronts the potentially towering cost of the Iran war.”

The debt will continue to grow

“In its annual report, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected in February that the government’s debt would outpace economic growth this year — and worsen in the years to follow. Pointing to a changing, aging work force, the scorekeeper estimated that U.S. debt held by the public would soar to 120 percent of gross domestic product by the end of 2036.

The effects

“If that occurred, the budget office warned, the ‘risk of a fiscal crisis’ would increase, eroding trust in the dollar and constraining the ability of lawmakers to ‘respond to unforeseen events or for other purposes, such as to promote economic activity or strengthen national defense.’”

Trump will compound the problem

“In the meantime, Republicans under Mr. Trump added to the debt, chiefly through enacting their package of tax cuts last year. William McBride, the chief economist at the Tax Foundation, which generally supports lower taxes, said that the cuts may levels of debt closer in time, maybe a few years.’

“Mr. McBride said the problem would only be compounded by Mr. Trump’s push for a massive increase in military spending, which he hopes to set at nearly $1.5 trillion starting next fiscal year. The president first indicated he would seek the boost, the largest in modern history, before declaring war on Iran — and since has suggested that the administration could seek additional money for that conflict.”

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#2 -America in Decline

In an article in The New York Times, Christopher Caldwell posits that “America Is Officially an Empire in Decline” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/03/opinion/oran-us-empire.html).

Mr. Caldwell is a contributing Opinion writer for the paper and the author of “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.”

Caldwell makes his basic point as follows.

“The American-Israeli attack on Iran was more than a bad idea; it has turned into a watershed in the decline of the American empire. Some might prefer the word ‘hegemony’ to describe the world order the United States leads, since its flag does not generally fly over the lands it protects or exploits. But the rules are the same: Imperial systems, whatever you call them, last only as long as their means are adequate to their ends. And with the Iran war, President Trump has overextended the empire dangerously.”

“The assumption in Washington over the past decade has been that the world is engaged in a game of geostrategic musical chairs and the music is about to stop. China may soon overmatch us not just in military-industrial capacity but also in information technology. The world will harden into a new, less favorable geostrategic configuration. This is the last moment to reshape it in America’s favor.”

The war on Iran demonstrates this. Caldwell writes, “That is because the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict.” Its missiles and other weapons “are needed to defend allies and interests in other theaters, and the United States is depleting them. According to reporting in The Times, it has already used 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles, earmarked for potential conflicts in Asia, leaving just 1,500 in the stockpile, and fired an additional 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, about 10 times as many as the military buys in an average year. American leaders have been scolding their European allies for years about the inadequacy of their fighting forces. But if one measures America’s military might against our pretensions rather than our G.D.P., it is just as inadequate.

Caldwell notes the U.S. has options, but it will “pay a very steep price, no matter which of them it chooses. It can desist in Iran — having demonstrated, for no good reason, that its military is far less dominant than the world had assumed. Or it can draw resources from theaters that are of vital national interest, such as Europe and East Asia, to fund what the president refers to as his Iranian ‘excursion.’ Or it can resort to the extreme military options Mr. Trump darkly alluded to in social media posts starting in early April, which will redound to the everlasting shame of the country he leads.

The United States stands to lose its reputation, its friends or its soul in this war of choice.

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#3 – As Trump’s Poll Numbers Fall, His Authoritarian Instincts Grow More Extreme

Sasha Abramsky, The Nation, April 1, 2026

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-authoritarianism-polls

Sasha Abramsky is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar, and Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America. His latest book is American Carnage: How Trump, Musk, and DOGE Butchered the US Government.

Increasingly unpopular and facing a fracturing coalition, Trump is using government power to punish his critics, take political revenge, and revel in his own cruelty.

“Even as President Donald Trump’s hold over the electorate wanes, his administration’s naked authoritarian tendencies intensify. If you can tell a man’s mettle by how he behaves under pressure, Trump—mired in a ludicrous standoff of his own making with Iran and cratering in the polls—is putting on a display of raw narcissism and petty cruelty unparalleled among modern democracies.

Abramsky writes: “When Robert Mueller died in March, Trump went onto social media to post a note explaining that he was glad that Mueller was dead. This was after he had declared that the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife by their mentally ill son was a result of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’ Yet, when late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel made a mildly off-color joke about Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow”—this was before the shooting and possible assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—Trump responded first by demanding, again, that ABC fire Kimmel and then by siccing Brendan Carr’s pliant FCC onto the broadcaster, initiating an unprecedented review of many of the network’s local licenses.”

Abramsky points out, “The FCC has argued that the scrutiny being accorded ABC licenses is solely to do with an investigation into its diversity policies (since, clearly, according to the white supremacist mores of the administration any efforts to present a diverse face to US viewers are somehow, inherently, illegitimate). Yet the timing of this makes it all too clear that in reality it is spiteful, vengeance politics, designed to pressure ABC into ditching Kimmel.

“In all likelihood, the efforts to pull ABC affiliates from the air will go nowhere; after all, the broadcaster’s parent company, Disney, has pretty deep pockets, and its lawyers aren’t going to let the company go quietly into the night. But the mere fact that the Trump administration is attempting to pull this trick shows just how far from democratic norms it has strayed and just how much it is willing to lean into the playbook used to such great effect over the past two decades by authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, and Tayyip Erdoğan.”

“Now, any wrap-up of the week’s authoritarian bilge would be remiss in neglecting to mention the extraordinary State Department decision this week to issue a limited number of Trump-embossed US passports to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. Let me emphasize how abnormal this is. Not a single other country on earth—not North Korea, not Iran, not Putin’s Russia, not Xi Jinping’s China—etches its current leader’s image onto its passports.”

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#4 – Economist: Don’t Listen to Hegseth, Trump’s Iran War Will Cost ‘Very Possibly Trillions’

Jessica Corbett refers to sources that offer this viewpoint, May 8, 2026

(https://www.commondreams.org/news/cost-of-iran-war). Here are excerpts.

“University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers on Friday joined a growing number of economists and other critics casting down on what he called ‘the Pentagon’s lowball $25 billion estimate’ for the cost of President Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran.”

Trump’s cabinet officials vastly underestimate the cost of this war.

Corbett writes, “While testifying before Congress last week alongside US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Pentagon comptroller Jules ‘Jay’ Hurst offered the $25 billion figure. However, experts have responded with raised eyebrows. Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the government spent at least $71.8 billion during the first two months of the war, or around $1.2 billion each day.

Although Trump told Congress last Friday—a key deadline under the War Powers Act—that his assault on Iran had been ‘terminated,’ citing the ceasefire deal reached a month ago after his genocidal threat, the administration has maintained its naval blockade and on Thursday bombed what it claimed were ‘Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces.’

“As the threat of more US bombings of Iran loomed, Wolfers wrote Friday in a New York Times opinion piece that ‘the Pentagon’s stated number reflects only a narrow accounting of the tab that Operation Epic Fury is running up. It’s the price of the more than 2,000 Tomahawk and Patriot missiles already fired, the warplanes already flown and in some cases lost, and the rest of the gear already chewed through. It does not measure the true cost of the war—including the human toll.’”

Corbett continues citing Wolfers.

“‘Since the start of the war, oil markets have been disrupted, consumer confidence has cratered, the global economy is groaning, and military budgets are growing,’ the economist continued. ‘The toll from this upheaval must be counted in lives disrupted, jobs lost, companies shut down (see: Spirit Airlines), and the income and output sacrificed. The less easily quantified costs—death, disability, and mental health—could become much more dramatic should President Trump send troops into Iran, which still can’t be ruled out.’”

The US and Israel have not achieved any of their objectives in the Iran War.

“The US and Israel said they wanted to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program and change its regime. The regime is now composed of more hard-liners than before, and Iran’s nuclear capability has not budged since last summer. Now the two sides are negotiating the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the conflict, and the terms of Iran’s nuclear program, which they were negotiating before the conflict. Moreover, the compromise being contemplated involves Iran pausing uranium enrichment in exchange for the US lifting sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds. That sounds suspiciously like the deal President Obama struck in 2015 that Trump ripped up when he took office….”

The US war has done harm to Iran and also the US.

“All this war has done is killed thousands of people, opened a new front for Israel in Lebanon, damaged most US military sites and most energy production facilities in the region, led to oil spills that are visible from space, created a shipping bottleneck that will take at least a year to fix, raised domestic gas prices to a record for this time of year, cost American consumers $34.3 billion and counting, ended the life of one US airline with more likely to come, and led us down an imminent path to physical shortages of critical commodities like oil, including in the United States.

There is no end in sight.

Corbett continues. “The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency has privately warned the Trump administration that ‘Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship,’ and its ‘analysis might even be underestimating Iran’s economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes.’”

A global recession?

“The reporting heightened concerns,” Corbett writes, “about how long the war may drag on. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that a prolonged conflict could cause a global recession.”

Wolfers estimates “based on the movement of oil prices, along with the S&P 500—is that stocks are about 5% lower than they otherwise would be, suggesting that the war has wiped about $3 trillion off the value of these companies.”

Trump wants a huge increase in military spending

“Shortly after launching the war in February, the White House signaled it would need $200 billion for the operation. However, it is now seeking a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year—which Hegseth tried to frame as a fiscally responsible plan that puts ‘the American taxpayer first’ in a widely ridiculed video this week. Wolfers highlighted that the budget request is ‘a roughly 40% boost over this year. That’s a massive $600 billion increase, or roughly $4,000 per household.’”

Military costs will exceed what Trump anticipates

“‘The best any economist can do right now is get the order of magnitude right, and my math suggests the Iran war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and very possibly trillions,’ Wolfers concluded.” Current estimates from the Trump administration also do not figure in ‘lifetime medical care and disability benefits for veterans, and the higher recruitment and retention costs that follow a bloody war—all compounded by a rising interest bill.’”

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#5 – Trump Administration Covering Up “Extensive” Damage Done to US Bases by Iran

Sharon Zhang reports on this cover up for Truthout, Published, April 27, 2026

(https://truthout.org/articles/trump-administration-covering-up-extensive-damage-done-to-us-bases-by-iran).

“In their initial retaliatory strikes of the war, Iranian forces caused far more extensive damage to U.S. military assets than Trump administration officials have admitted to in public and private, new reporting finds as Germany’s chancellor says the U.S. is being ‘humiliated’ by Iran.

“In these strikes, Iran hit over 100 targets across 11 U.S. bases in the Middle East, striking ‘warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft,’ according to reporting by NBC, citing an analysis by conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Zhang continues, “These strikes caused damage that will cost billions of dollars to repair, the publication found, citing U.S. officials, congressional aides, and another person familiar with the damage. The reporting corroborates earlier findings that many of the U.S.’s 13 bases in the region have been rendered ‘all but uninhabitable’ due to strikes.

Bottom of Form

“In all,” Zhang writes, “the damage is far worse than Trump administration officials have acknowledged both in public and in private briefings with Congress, aides told NBC. The Pentagon is not even disclosing the extent of the damage or estimated costs of repairs to members of Congress, the aides said.

“No one knows anything. And it’s not for lack of asking,” one congressional GOP aide said. “We have been asking for weeks and not getting specifics, even as the Pentagon is asking for a record-high budget.”

Zhang: “Officials told NBC that the Trump administration is still gearing up to request over $100 billion — on top of its record-shattering $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget ask — in supplemental funding for the war, despite some of the more expensive aspects of the war, like airstrikes, having come to a standstill in recent weeks.

The Trump administration is attempting to withhold information on the costs of the war.

“Meanwhile,” Zhang continues, “multiple private satellite imagery companies are withholding imagery of the region at the request of the U.S. government.

“Officials are also reportedly withholding U.S. casualty numbers. The Intercept has reported that the Pentagon’s casualty counts keep shifting, and that last week officials actually dropped the total number of casualties from 428 to 413, without explanation. One U.S. government official said the Pentagon’s practices are the ‘definition of a cover-up.’”

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#6 – An Almost Unthinkable Threat’: Trump Warning That Iran Will ‘Glow’ Sparks Latest Fears of Nuclear Attack

Stephen Prager reports on Trump’s seeming allusion to the use of nuclear weapons in his Iran War, May 8, 2026 (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-make-iran-glow).

Prager writes, “As he struggles to force Iran’s capitulation, US President Donald Trump issued what seemed to be yet another threat to commit an act of mass destruction against the country through nuclear warfare.

“When negotiations have faltered in recent weeks, Trump has on multiple occasions defaulted to genocidal threats—including that the ‘whole nation of Iran’ would ‘die,’ and that the whole country would be ‘blown up’—which have only seemed to anger and galvanize his Iranian adversaries rather than make them quake with fear.”

“On Thursday, the US launched what it said were ‘self-defense’ strikes on military facilities it claimed were responsible for attempting to attack three US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran called the attacks a violation of the ceasefire and said its attacks on US ships were in response to American bombings of Iranian oil tankers the previous day.

“Trump told reporters on Thursday that if the ceasefire were truly over, everyone would know. ‘If there’s no ceasefire, you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran,’ he said. ‘They’d better sign the agreement fast… If they don’t sign, they’re going to have a lot of pain.’”

“Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, the editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that if it were indeed a nuclear threat, it would be ‘ironic since the war today supposedly is to prevent Iran from getting… a nuclear weapon.’

“The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) said that ‘threatening to make Iran glow—with nuclear weapons or otherwise—is an almost unthinkable threat to commit a mass war crime against 92 million people. It must never be normalized.’

“Trump’s pledge to wipe out Iranian civilization last month drew widespread condemnation and led dozens of Democratic members of Congress to call for his Cabinet to remove him from office using the powers of the 25th Amendment.”

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#7 – Sunlight Doesn’t Go Through the Strait of Hormuz: Bill McKibben on Iran Oil Shock & Green Transition, interviews on Democracy Now (https://www.democracynow.org/2026/4/30/climate_change_super_el_nino_amoc).

Bill McKibben. as a guest on Democracy Now, sees a good thing coming out of
Trump’s war on Iran, namely that some countries are moving away from fossil fuels to renewables. He has published many books and is a co-founder of 350.org and founder of Third Act.

The title of this episode it “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization”

Here it most of the Transcript of the interview.

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to climate change. Last month was the warmest March on record in over 130 years in the United States, and average rainfall across the country is at a record low so far this year. The dry conditions are fueling wildfires across Georgia and Florida ahead of what is expected to be a very hot summer. And now the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, is predicting a likely super El Niño weather pattern to begin later this year through 2027, further driving up average global temperatures.

Meanwhile, new research has found that a major ocean circulatory system in the Atlantic, known as AMOC, is in danger of weakening to the point of collapse faster and sooner than previously thought. The AMOC system, which includes the Gulf Stream, helps distribute heat around the planet. Its collapse could have catastrophic consequences. Scientists are now concerned the tipping point could be reached as early as the middle of this century.

But despite overwhelming scientific consensus, the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, is moving away from taking the threat seriously. This is President Trump earlier this month at a [Turning] Point USA rally in Phoenix.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The green new scam, one of the greatest scams in history. Remember, climate change, global warming, all of this. They actually had global warming, remember. Then that wasn’t working, because we were actually cooling as a planet. … And then they just said climate change, because climate change takes care of heat, snow, whatever you have.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump speaking at Turning Point. Despite this, the energy crisis caused by the war in Iran is underscoring the economic and security benefits of transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable alternatives.

For more on all of this, we’re joined by climate activist and author Bill McKibben. His recent article in The New Yorker magazine is headlined “The Iran War Is Another Reason to Quit Oil.” Bill McKibben is co-founder of 350.org and Third Act, joining us here in our New York studio.

Welcome back, Bill, to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran means for the climate?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, what it meant, what it means for energy policy is that everyone around the world can suddenly see the utter folly of relying on a fuel that not only is destroying the planet’s climate, but also that can be bottled up behind a 20-mile-long waterway. I mean, sunlight has to travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, but none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. That makes it a very appealing alternative, especially now that it’s cheaper than burning coal and gas and oil. So, the movement in the last month has been pretty remarkable around much of the world in the direction of what we used to call alternative energy. The only place that’s not happening, of course, is here at home.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you explain? I mean, first of all, the U.S. now produces the most oil in the world. So, how does that play into this?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, Pete Hegseth said the other day that there were tankers lining up outside the Texas ship channel to get good old American crude. It’s true that in the short run, this will probably be a bonus for the big American oil companies, whose profits are through the roof, and who, by the way, should be paying a serious windfall profits tax in any serious government. But over the slightly longer term, what we’re seeing is demand destruction around the planet.

Look, the forecast for how American oil companies were going to stay rich and prosperous for the next couple of decades pretty much depended on everybody in Asia deciding they were going to drive gasoline-powered pickup trucks. That’s not what’s happening. Instead, people are crowding into the showrooms of companies like BYD, the Chinese EV giant, because they don’t want to pay. I mean, we’re paying $4 and $5 for gas. It’s much higher in much of Asia, which is, you know, where this story will be decided.

Would that we were doing all this for climate reasons. I mean, we’re meeting right now, or just finished this big meeting in Santa Marta in Colombia, with many nations trying to work towards a fossil fuel phaseout on climate grounds. That isn’t happening anywhere near fast enough. A bigger catalyst at the moment is the clear geopolitical imperative to get off fossil fuel while you can.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about where you’re seeing this around the world. As you say, in fact, countries are running to this, as the U.S. administration is running away from this.

BILL McKIBBEN: The president of South Korea said the other day that he wasn’t able to sleep at night, trying to figure out where they were going to find energy supplies. The place they’re going to find them, he said, is homegrown energy. Indonesia, which is going to be one of the most important powers in the world, announced, within days of the start of hostilities, that they were going to put 100 gigawatts’ worth of solar on their grid in the next few years. Everybody’s figuring out that it is ludicrous to be exposed any more than you have to to the completely volatile and undependable supply of fossil fuel, when, you know, the sun rises pretty much every morning.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could explain, to your point — you know, the argument here is that, you know, renewables are too expensive, they take too long. But China, meanwhile, has built so much clean energy very, very quickly, it’s a world leader in clean energy investment, installation and manufacturing. How did that happen?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, the Chinese decided that this was going to be the strategic imperative, and so they got to work. And they’ve driven the price down so far that this is by far the — we live on a planet where the cheapest way, Nermeen, to produce energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. That’s been true now for three or four years. And it’s showing up in the fact that 95% of new electric generation around the planet last year came from the sun and the wind.

Now, the U.S. is the exception to that. Even here, though, we’re seeing continued investment in this stuff, just because of economics. The state where it’s growing the fastest is that radical progressive hub, Texas. And at Third Act, we’ve been having lots of luck this spring in state legislatures around the country, getting them to approve this so-called balcony solar, or plug-in solar, that’s the very easiest, cheapest way for apartment dwellers and others to get in on this burgeoning revolution.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill, we just have two minutes, and I want to get to the El Niño and the possible collapse of this AMOC, the Atlantic Ocean circulation system, what this means.

BILL McKIBBEN: Nothing good. When I wrote The End of Nature 40 years ago, this was one of the things that we were talking about as a possible result of climate change. As you melt, as fresh water pours off a melting Greenland, it changes the salinity, and hence the density, of sea water in the North Atlantic. That density drives this giant heat distribution engine, the biggest on the planet. If it collapses, as the chief scientist on this work now said is at least a 50% possibility this century, then it’s a civilizational-scale event. Temperatures plummet across Western Europe. Sea levels rise sharply and quickly along the eastern U.S. But, basically, this — basically, we add, I don’t know, 30 or 40 parts per million CO2 almost immediately to the atmosphere, as CO2 leaves the ocean. These are the kind of things that they make science fiction thrillers about. It would be the biggest tool that we have right now to do that is the very rapid deployment of clean energy.

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Concluding thoughts

Trump and his administration are taking to country into a steep decline, with their right-wing policies that benefit the rich and powerful, along with Trump and his family, greatly. At the same time, they are advancing policies that will continue doing harm to most Americans. Trump pursues vanity projects while all this is taking place. He calls for massive increases in military spending, ostensibly for the continuation of the current war and to rely on force or the threat of force in his international relations. Under Trump, the US is no longer recognized as a reliable ally and is in the process is undermining long-standing alliances. And, to top it off, he is increasing the country’s debt and undermining the nation’s future.

Trump proposes a huge increase in military spending, despite widespread economic stresses

Trump proposes a huge increase in military spending despite widespread economic stresses.

April 10, 2026

Bob Sheak

Arlene Sheak edits

Introduction

Trump and Republicans in Congress are – and have been – advancing a budget for the country that reduces assistance for ordinary citizens. This is glaringly obvious in Trump’s budget proposal for 2027, a budget that likely will be approved by Republicans in Congress. It is a budget that overwhelming favors military spending. It would not be so bad if citizens generally were in sound financial shape, but many are not. There has been an “affordability” problem across the country for most of Trump’s second term.

At the same time, people are also being negatively affected by Trump’s tariffs, cuts in government programs and staff in the early months of his second term, a precarious job market, and the disastrous effects of his Iran War reflected, for example, in high gas prices and high fertilizer prices. See the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities for a detailed analysis if the economic difficulties associated with the policies of Trump and the Republican party (https://www.cbpp.org.research/federal-budget/a-record-of-historic-harm-in-the-first-year-of-trumps-second-term). Here is a summary of the CBPP’s research.

“The Trump Administration and congressional Republicans advanced one of the most radically regressive policy agendas in our nation’s history during the first year of President Trump’s second term. As a result, tens of millions of people will be less able to meet the growing cost of their basic needs — whether it’s affording groceries, seeing a doctor, keeping the power on, or paying the rent — even as the wealthiest households get a windfall of more tax breaks. At the same time, President Trump and his Administration have undermined and corrupted many basic functions of government, including the proper and timely allocation of funds approved by Congress, leading to more disruption and harm.”

These problems figure in the low poll ratings of Trump. For example, here is the most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest from The Economist (April 1, 2026):

Favorable: 36%
Unfavorable: 57%
Not sure: 7%

In this context, consider Trump’s 2027 budget proposal.

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“A Moral Obscenity”

Jake Johnson refers to this term in describing Trump’s 2027 budget proposal (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-2027-budget). Here is some of what he writes.

“President Donald Trump’s White House released a budget proposal on Friday [Sept. 3] that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare, climate, and housing programs.”

“Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress [now controlled by Republicans] includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while boosting military outlays by 42%—or nearly $500 billion—compared to current levels.”

Johnson continues. “Programs cut or eliminated in the proposed budget—under the guise of slashing ‘woke programs’ and ‘ending the Green New Scam’—include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice program, Community Services Block Grants, electric vehicle charging subsidies, renewable energy initiatives at the Interior Department, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing.

“The budget proposal also calls for cuts to the already-depleted Internal Revenue Service, without offering specific figures.”

“One budget expert noted that, if enacted, the White House’s requested cuts would bring nondefense discretionary spending to ‘its lowest level in the modern era.’”

Alternatively, what would $500 billion in Pentagon spending if it were spent on non-defense programs and the needs of typical citizens? Here are some answers to which Johnson refers.

“The $500 billion annual increase in proposed Pentagon spending—if it were instead deployed humanely—would be enough to solve or meaningfully address the nation’s great problems, from healthcare to daycare, from the climate crisis to affordable housing, from improving schools to making college education affordable,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “Instead, Trump and Vought propose to spend an unfathomable amount on a Pentagon that can’t even pass an audit to further empower an out-of-control and incompetent leader in Pete Hegseth.”

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Trump’s Imperial Military Budget

Robert L. Borosage refers to Trump’s budget proposal as an “imperial military budget, The Nation, April 8, 2026

(https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-imperials-military-budget).

Borosage writes: “In his recent military budget, Trump is saying the quiet part out loud: Waging war is more important to his administration than providing for basic needs at home.”

He points out that “the $1.5 trillion military budget—a $500 billion, 42 percent increase that would be the largest year-on-year percentage increase since the mobilization for Korean War.” Trump is all-in on this increase, while saying that the federal government should not have to continue to pay for a host of non-defense programs. He quotes Trump.

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget director] Russell [Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare…. We’re fighting wars…. it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.”

Borosage continues. “It wasn’t just daycare that would take the hit. The press reported that president’s budget called for a 10 percent cut in all non-defense discretionary programs (outside of Medicare and Medicaid, which were savaged last year, and Social Security), targeting primarily anything related to climate, the environment, civil rights, education, and food support and other poverty programs. But in reality, compared to the cost of continuing current levels of service, it slashes domestic programs by nearly one-fourth. With ICE and Homeland Security getting increases, targeted programs were cut to the bone: the Environmental Protection Agency cut by more than one-half, LIHEAP—heating subsidies for low income families—eliminated, another $20 billion lopped off rebuilding infrastructure.”

Borosage elaborates his point.

“The proposed $1.5 trillion annual military budget, about 5 percent of the GNP, is real money. As Dean Baker notes, it comes to about $12,000 per family. And that doesn’t include the $200 billion supplemental that the Pentagon will reportedly seek to pay for the war on Iran.

Borosage continues. “The money lards a military-industrial complex that is the largest source of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government—and has never been able to pass an audit.”

And he refers to Representative Ro Khanna on what alternative non-military spending could buy.

“Let me tell you what $200 billion could do here in America. It would allow for free public college for every American kid. We could build a thousand trade schools, we could pay every American teacher $60,000 to start.

“We could have universal childcare: childcare at $10 a day, with childcare workers making $25 an hour. And we could fully fund special needs education at 40% of what the federal government needs to fund.

“Or it could pay to reverse the cuts already made in vital needs. Reversing the cuts in Obamacare made by Trump and the Republican Congress last year would cost $27 billion annually. Extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit that aided low-wage workers curing Covid would cost about $40 billion annually.

We don’t need more military spending to keep us safe. We already have such a force.

Indeed, “Trump repeatedly and correctly boasts that the US military is already the most powerful military in the world by far. The ‘Department of War’ accounts for 40 percent of the world’s military spending, more than the next nine costliest militaries combined—seven of which are (or were before Trump) our allies. This despite the fact that, surrounded by oceans to the East and West and allies to the North and South, the United States is uniquely secure against any conventional assault.”

Trump’s “military fantasies”

“But,” Borosage writes, “Trump’s budget request isn’t really a wartime budget. Most of the increase is a down payment on military fantasies. A centerpiece is an initial investment in Trump’s Golden Dome, his utterly fantastically recycled version of Reagan’s Star Wars, calling for building a defensive ‘dome against missile attacks. It will squander hundreds of billions on multiple layers of land-, sea-, and space-based sensors and interceptors designed to protect the US from next-generation missiles and drones. Like Reagan’s fantasy, the system won’t work, serving only to enrich high-tech military contractors, accelerate the arms race in space, and lead China and Russia and other future nuclear-armed adversaries (France?) to move toward hair-trigger alert postures. Add to that a down payment of $65.8 billion in shipbuilding for Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’ featuring ‘Trump-class’ battleships that, if our corrupted military contractors actually succeed in building, will provide tempting targets for inexpensive air and underwater drones that are becoming the weapons of choice for weaker countries.”

Borosage offers the following conclusion. “A $1.5 trillion annual military budget isn’t necessary for the defense of the United States. Rather it assumes that the US will continue to police the world. We will remain committed to global military hegemony—aiming to be dominant militarily in this hemisphere, from Europe to the Russian border, counter China in the South China Sea, strike terrorists across the world, sustain a global empire of 750-plus military bases, and deploy military forces to over 100 countries, while patrolling the seven seas.”

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William Hartung contends in an article for Common Dreams. April 3, 2026that Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon Budget will make US weaker

(https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/1-5-trillion-pentagon-budget). William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author most recently of “Pathways to Pentagon Spending Reductions: Removing the Obstacles.”

Here’s some of what Hartung writes.

““It has been reported that the Pentagon on Friday [April 3] will release a proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027 of almost $1.5 trillion, with approximately $1.15 trillion in discretionary spending contained in the department’s regular annual budget and an additional $350 billion dependent on Congress including it in a separate budget reconciliation bill.

“Whatever vehicles the administration chooses to promote this huge increase, it will be doubling down on a failed budgetary and national security strategy. If passed as requested, $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending—in a single year–will make America weaker by underwriting a misguided strategy, funding outmoded weapons programs, and crowding out other essential public investments.

“The current war in the Middle East is a case study in the ineffectiveness of an overreliance on military force in seeking to make America or the world a safer place.”

Here is a key point. Hartung writes: “In his first term, President Trump abandoned a multilateral agreement that was effectively blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. Six years later, in his second term, the president initially justified his disastrous intervention against Iran as being motivated by fears” that Iran might be developing such a capacity. He did this without evidence they were doing so.

Hartung emphasizes that diplomacy worked, while reckless resort to force does not, as evidenced by the devastating human, budgetary, and global economic consequences of the current Middle East war. Passing a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget would be a recipe for endless war.

“Meanwhile, other, non-military investments needed to protect the lives and livelihoods of Americans are being sharply reduced. By one account, the first week of the war on Iran cost $11.6 billion. That’s more than the Trump administration proposed for the annual budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency combined for this year. Yet addressing the climate crisis and the need to prevent future outbreaks of disease are essential to the safety and security of Americans.

“The administration has also reduced our available tools of influence on the foreign policy front by decimating the Agency for International Development, laying off trained diplomats at the State Department, and withdrawing from major international agreements. This leaves force and the threat of force as virtually the last tools standing for promoting U.S. security interests.”

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Eric Ross writes at length for Tom Dispatch on “The Price of Empire and the Costs of War on Iran.” April 2, 2026 (https://tomdispatch.com/blowback-2026). In his opening paragraph, Ross presents a summary of the many “costs” of Trump’s war on Iran, not only for the US but even more on Iran.

“What will the costs of the latest round of illegal, ill-fated U.S. military adventurism in the Middle East amount to? Some of the toll is already clear. Washington has squandered billions of dollars on a reckless war of aggression against Iran. A merciless campaign of aerial bombardment has driven millions from their homes. American and Israeli airstrikes have rained destruction on 10,000 civilian sites and already killed more than 3,000 people in Iran and Lebanon. Among the dead are more than 200 children, many killed in a U.S. strike on a girls’ school, a war crime that evokes the grim precedent of such past American atrocities as the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam or the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing in Iraq.

“The latest war has also dealt a potentially fatal blow to our already battered democratic institutions. It’s a war neither authorized by Congress nor supported by the public. Instead, it was launched by a president who refuses to submit to the law or heed the will of the people, claiming in true authoritarian fashion that he is the law, and that he alone embodies the popular will.”

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Sarah Fortinsky writes on how Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low as the Iran war squeezes economy, and reminds us how this war was arbitrarily started by Trump, with no consultation with Congress and with no concern about public opinion. Now, the public is reacting, belatedly negatively(https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5811709-trump-approval-rating-iran-war-economy). Here’s some of what she writes.

“President Trump’s approval numbers have slipped in recent weeks, hovering near the lowest levels of his second term, as Americans — including his conservative base — grow increasingly wary of a prolonged war in Iran that could portend trouble for the U.S. economy.

“Recent polling from YouGov and The Economist has Trump’s approval rating down 4 percentage points since just before the U.S. struck Iran, falling from 39 percent in late February to 35 percent in the latest survey.

“A Reuters/Ipsos poll similarly put Trump’s approval at 36 percent, down from 40 percent earlier this month, while a Fox News survey found the president’s disapproval rating at 59 percent, the highest level recorded in either of his terms.

The shift has coincided with declining support for Trump’s handling of the Iran war, which saw its sharpest drop yet this past week — as gas prices climbed to more than $4 for the first time since 2022….”

“Trump, who spoke to the public Wednesday night [April 1] about the conflict, saw his polling on Iran start out at 39 percent in early March, before dropping to 36 percent for two weeks and then ticking down to 30 percent in the latest YouGov/Economist survey.”

“The drop-off in Trump’s overall approval rating comes as Americans broadly sour on the economy, with only 14 percent saying conditions are improving….”

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Concluding thoughts

Trump’s budget proposal, with its emphasis on military spending and dismissal of federal responsibility for most non-defense programs, is losing his support among vast numbers of citizens, even among his base. This is reflected in polls and also in recent Democratic electoral victories. It is also reflected in the 8 million people who demonstrated against Trump on “No King’s” day. Still, it is of great concern that Trump is still able to wield such great power as president.

The true costs of the Iran War

Bob Sheak, March 22, 2026

Arlene Sheak edits

Introduction

There are so many indications of how poorly and undemocratically Trump is using the power of his presidency. Still, he continues to have the support of his enormous MAGA base. He dominates the Republican Party and has the support of large segments of the rich and powerful. His party controls both the House and Senate. He can count on the Supreme Court to support him in significant ways, by giving him immunity from the law while he is president, as one example.

One miscalculated way Trump uses this power is to take the country to war in Iran. It can be a distraction from other problems the president faces –the lackluster economy, the healthcare crisis, the absence of job creation, the angry responses to the effects of his tariffs, his relationship to Epstein, the low ratings he gets for his presidency, and so forth. But Trump’s Iran war exacerbates all these problems.

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The Iran War

He has taken the country into an unnecessary war of his choosing that is compounding the country’s economic difficulties – while crippling Iran’s economy, killing and disrupting the population, including young children. It is important to remember that, contrary to the Trump government’s distorted assessment, Iran did not represent a threat to the U.S., and that prior to the war they had expressed a willingness to negotiate with the U.S. on the nuclear bomb issue and Trump seemed to agree. CNN journalists reported on this (https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/03/middleeast/iran-nuclear-talks-us-strike-intl-hnk).

“Iran has tentatively agreed to resume nuclear talks with the United States as it tries to avert the threat of further military strikes, in what would be the first such negotiations since the Trump administration bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites last summer.

“The discussions are expected to be held in Oman, a source familiar with the matter told CNN Tuesday night. Iran’s semi-official ⁠ISNA news agency also reported Oman as the venue for talks that it said would take place on Friday. ‍

“The White House said Tuesday that talks between would proceed this week despite changes requested by Tehran to the venue and format.

“Sources had told CNN on Monday that Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, was likely to meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, in Istanbul on Friday.

“However, the plans hit a snag after Tehran requested the talks be relocated to a different city, that regional participants be excluded and that the scope of the discussions be limited to just the country’s nuclear program, CNN reported earlier. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that Trump is keeping open the option of military strikes if diplomacy fails.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkiansaid Tuesday that Tehran is pursuing negotiations –– though with conditions.

“‘I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists — one free from threats and unreasonable expectations — to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency,’ Pezeshkian wrote on X.

“He said he has given the go-ahead for the negotiations following ‘requests from friendly governments in the region.’”

Of course, Trump subsequently ordered the launching of the “excursion,” now in its fourth week. But, despite the destruction and death Iran is suffering, Iran is striking back, sending drones into nearby countries and U.S. bases, causing some casualties, and closing the Hormuz Straits, which has caused oil and gas prices to soar in the U.S. and around the world.

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The costs to the U.S. of the war

The $1.3-Million-a-Minute War

Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, reports that the war is costing the U.S. $1.3 million a minute

(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/opinion/iran-war-cost.html). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Let’s ponder for a moment the vast sums that we’re pouring into the war with Iran. The Pentagon has requested [an additional] $200 billion (more than $1,400 per American household) to fund the war, but even that understates the total cost.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on financing war, who was a former assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce under Bill Clinton, told me [Kristof] that most of the costs will arrive later. For example, any soldier who develops a medical disorder or aggravates an existing one will receive lifelong benefits and medical care. If today’s troops claim such benefits at the same rate as those who participated in the 1990-91 gulf war, that alone would eventually cost at least $600 billion, Bilmes said. Not to mention, of course, the human toll of all of this.

“All told, she expects this Iran war to cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.”

Alternative ways this money could be spent – examples

Kristof writes: “Here are some ideas of what the war money could be used for instead. My calculations are conservative, based on Pentagon reporting that the first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion — and even that incomplete tally amounted to more than $1.3 million a minute.

“For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than $125,000 annually, at a cost of around $30 billion a year.

“For less than three weeks of war, or $35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds.

“For $75 million, about an hour’s worth of war, we could provide three books free to every child in America who is living under the poverty line, according to Kyle Zimmer of First Book, a nonprofit that works on early literacy. Research suggests that books like these can help get children reading and improve their outcomes.

“A woman dies in the United States every two hours, on average, from cervical cancer. Screening all uninsured women who need it would cost perhaps $1 billion and could save hundreds of lives, according to Dr. Linda Eckert, a cervical cancer expert at the University of Washington. That’s less than 13 hours of the war bill.

“We could get glasses to all 2.3 million low-income schoolchildren in the United States who need them but don’t have them. The base cost would be about $300 million, according to Vision to Learn, a nonprofit that does this work. The bill would be what we spend on four hours of this war.

“For about $34 billion a year, less than three weeks of war, we could restore health insurance subsidies that the Trump administration let expire last year. One analysis predicted an additional 8,800 preventable American deaths as a result.

“The war money would save even more lives if we allocated part of it abroad. Indeed, we spent more on the first three days of war than we spent ($4 billion) on all humanitarian aid in 2025. Consider what we could achieve internationally:

“For $400 million or less, a bit more than five hours of war, we could deworm all children in need worldwide, according to Evidence Action, a nonprofit that works on deworming. This would result in stronger, healthier children and adults.

“For $380 million, less than five hours of war, we could provide vitamin A supplementation for the 190 million children who need it. Helen Keller Intl, a nonprofit engaged in this work, says this would prevent up to 480,000 child deaths each year and virtually eliminate blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

“About one day’s worth of war spending could save more than 350,000 lives from malaria, through a rigorously studied screening and prevention program, according to Esther Duflo, an economist at M.I.T.’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.”

“If we reallocated this war spending to needs at home and abroad, Americans would have access to school from pre-K to college and would have health insurance, and large numbers of children worldwide would not starve to death — and we would still have billions of dollars left over.”

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Economist Jack Rasmus considers “some economic consequences of the Iran War” (https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/20/some-economic-consequences-of-the-iran-war). Jack Rasmus is author of ’The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, January 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network on Fridays at 2pm est. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

Here is just some of what he writes in this highly documented article.

“As the US-Israel war on Iran enters its third week [now fourth week], the outlines of the economic consequences and fallout of the war have begun to emerge. As the war continues—and by most indicators it appears it will for months longer—the War’s negative impact on the US and world economies will deepen further.

“What are some of the economic dimensions for the war’s negative consequences?

“First and most obvious is the current oil price shock’s effect on inflation. Not just for US prices, but other countries as well. And not just for goods and services but for asset prices (i.e. stocks, bonds, forex, derivatives, gold, silver, etc.).

“Another is the long-term disruption of global supply chains and the volume of global trade.

“As inflation rises, central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, will continue to raise interest rates with a corresponding negative impact on the US and other economies, many of which are already nearly stagnant or are beginning to enter recession. Most heavily impacted will be Europe, the Gulf States, and Middle East energy-dependent countries in East Asia like Japan and South Korea.

“Another negative impact will be on global money capital flows—both real investment and financial portfolio asset markets (stocks, bonds, forex, derivatives, etc.).

“Then there’s the US budget deficit and national debt. The deficit will now approach $2 trillion a year, for the third straight year. That deficit will drive the national debt to exceed $39 trillion by later this spring and possibly $40 trillion by year end.

“The Iran war and its costs converge with a host of other forces driving the deficit and the debt into ever greater crisis: Trump’s escalating war spending (including his plan for $400 billion more for just the Pentagon), the current sharply slowing US real economy (that grew at a mere 0.7% rate in fourth quarter 2025), the present collapse of employment and job creation now underway in the US and Trump’s massive 2025 $5 trillion tax cuts benefiting mostly investors and corporations at the expense of US Treasury tax revenues which is estimated to reduce corporate income tax revenues by $77 billion in 2026.

“Not least, the war will accelerate the current fiscal crisis of the American Empire. The costs of Empire now exceed $2.2 trillion a year when all categories of ‘defense’ in the US budget are considered, not just the Pentagon and the US Department of Defense—the latter alone which now exceeds $1.1 trillion a year.

“Trump’s war in Iran will exacerbate all these negative economic trends, US and global; and the longer the war continues—which by all indicators it will—the worse the negative economic consequences.”

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Trump underestimates the costs of the Iran War

Nick Turse considers the costs in an article for The Intercept

(https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/trump-iran-war-cost).

He states his central point: “The Trump administration is drastically undercounting the price tag of the U.S. war with Iran, peddling fragmentary estimates that offer Americans a skewed understanding of the costs.

“The Pentagon on Thursday said the U.S. spent about $11.3 billion in just one week of its war on Iran; Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett similarly put the figure at $12 billion on Sunday.

‘But these sums are dwarfed by estimates offered by experts in the costs of war, lawmakers experienced with the Pentagon budget, and two government officials briefed on Operation Epic Fury who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

‘At the very least, they say the war is burning through between $1 billion and $2 billion per day — or roughly $11,500 to $23,000 per second. The cost, the officials told The Intercept, could rise to a quarter trillion dollars or more over the coming months.

The long-term costs

Turse continues. “Even that is a drop in the bucket compared to the long-term expenses, which could cost the U.S. trillions of dollars in the decades to come. One of the officials lamented that Americans would be paying off the war for generations.

“‘If this war takes months rather than weeks, the costs will become astronomical,’ said Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog advocating for an end to wasteful spending,

“Jules Hurst III, the War Department’s acting comptroller and chief financial officer, called the Pentagon’s initial $11.3 billion estimate a “ballpark number,” speaking at the Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation Base Summit. Hurst said a more comprehensive figure would be provided with a supplemental budget request, which he said the Pentagon plans to soon submit to the White House and Congress.

“Democratic lawmakers believe the true number is far higher because the Pentagon estimate did not include many expenses, including the massive buildup of military assets, weapons, and personnel in the Middle East ahead of the conflict.

Lawmakers have said they expect the Iran War supplemental request to reach at least $50 billion — on top of a $1.5 trillion War Department budget request for 2027.

Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif. told The Intercept that Americans had been conned into an open-ended conflict, with unclear goals and no exit plan.

“‘We haven’t gotten sufficient details in public or behind closed doors about the strategy, the objectives, the length of the operation, or how much this will cost taxpayers,’ she told The Intercept. ‘The American people are demanding an end to this illegal war to prevent more killings of children, retaliation against U.S. service members, skyrocketing costs to U.S. taxpayers, and yet another endless war.’”

Turse reports, “A three-week conflict could cost taxpayers between $60 billion and $130 billion, according to the two government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, with both stressing that the estimates were speculative. “It’s a back of the napkin estimate,” said one official.

“A five-week war could top out at $175 billion. Eight weeks could put the total at $250 billion. ‘They really have no idea of the real cost,’ said one of the officials, noting that bookkeeping is not a Pentagon strong suit. The self-styled War Department has never passed an audit, despite almost a decade of attempts.”

Estimate costs of the war don’t consider the “pre-war military buildup, which had already cost taxpayers an estimated $630 million. “according to Elaine McCusker, a former senior Pentagon budget official now at the American Enterprise Institute. (McCusker said those costs are likely to be absorbed within the Pentagon’s existing $839 billion 2026 budget.)”

“Initial estimates of the first 100 hours of the war tacked on around $3.7 billion in operational costs, munitions, and damaged or destroyed equipment, according to a cost breakdown by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS. This and other estimates turned out to be drastic undercounts as Pentagon officials, in classified briefings, disclosed that the military burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions in just the first two days of the war. An updated analysis by CSIS now estimates that Epic Fury cost $16.5 billion by its 12th day.”

Linda Bilmes (see reference to her on p. 3) says that the price tag of the war will exceed $50 billion if the conflict stretches into its third or fourth week. ‘Probably higher, she added.

“Bilmes cautioned that enormous short-term expenses — like spent munitions, the deployments of aircraft carrier strike groups, and aircraft shot down — will be eclipsed by even more significant expenditures like the long-term costs of veterans’ benefits and interest on the debt to pay for the war. The ultimate cost, Bilmes says, may reach into the trillions of dollars.

“Bilmes notes that around 50,000 U.S. troops are deployed around the Middle East as the United States and Israel, as well as Iran and its proxies, strike fuel depots, oil facilities, and military sites — all of which release noxious substances shown to negatively affect human health. ‘The majority are being exposed to toxins, contamination, acid rain, dust from infrastructure destruction, and burning oil fumes, so we can estimate that at least one-third will be claiming disability benefits under the PACT Act,’ she said, referring to a landmark 2022 law expanding health care and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances. ‘That is a major long-term cost that almost nobody looks at.’ Bilmes said that if veterans claim benefits at the rate of the extremely short 1990 Gulf War — 37 percent of whom receive compensation today — this alone would add around $600 billion in costs over their lifetimes.

Bilmes explained that these long-term costs are exacerbated by the fact that all the money is borrowed. “Back in 2004, the public debt was below $4 trillion. Now the gross debt is $38 trillion — and about 30 percent of that is due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” she said. A key contributor to that spike is the fact that the United States went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 while simultaneously cutting taxes — increasing spending while reducing revenues.

“‘This combination had never happened before in the history of U.S. wars,’ she said. With interest rates almost double what they were in the 2010s, Bilmes notes that 14 percent of the federal budget already goes to interest payments, which are destined to rise further with the Iran war.”

“Murphy, the policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense,

“‘We’re facing a spiraling debt crisis, skyrocketing health care premiums, dire food insecurity, and natural disasters that are growing more frequent, extreme, and costly. These are national security issues,’ Murphy, policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, told The Intercept. “If Congress believes this war is a good use of taxpayer dollars, it should vote on an authorization for the use of military force.” It hasn’t yet done this. Taxpayers are entitled to more clarity about why this war is being fought, what the endgame is, and how much it will cost in American casualties and deaths.

The unfortunate truth is that Americans will be paying massive sums of money for generations to finance Trump’s second war with Iran. “These costs aren’t known to the American people.” Our children will end up paying for his tragic misadventure.

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The Trump government wants $200 billion more for its war on Iran

Helene Cooper, Tony Romm, Megan Mineiro and Karoun Demirjian report on the Pentagon’s request of $200 billion to fund the Iran War

(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/middleeast/pentagon-200-billion-iran-war-funding-hegseth.html). Here’s some of what they report

“The Pentagon has asked for $200 billion in funding for the war in Iran, according to a military official and an administration official, a significant sum adding to the costs of an already divisive campaign.

“The request has been sent to the White House, the military official said, which will review it before any request for funds is formally submitted to Congress. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal. The request was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

“‘Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys,’ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said when asked about the request during a news conference on Thursday, adding: ‘As far as the $200 billion, I think that number could move.’

“On Capitol Hill, the sum — nearly a quarter of the country’s entire annual defense budget — is already raising eyebrows among some moderate Republicans who would be key to approving the funds, including Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and the head of the chamber’s Appropriations Committee. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska and a key swing vote, said that the Trump administration would have to make a more concerted effort to engage Congress on the war before such a request could be approved.

The journalists note, “It was not immediately clear how long the Pentagon intended for the $200 billion for the Iran war to last, or what operations it would cover.” This request suggests that the U.S. military is preparing for an extended engagement in Iran.

Last week, Pentagon officials told lawmakers that the first six days of the war against Iran had cost more than $11.3 billion. Since then, President Trump has threatened to escalate the fighting, including floating the idea of putting American troops on the ground even as he has alternated the threats with suggestions that the United States might conclude its military campaign soon.

But the $200 billion figure suggests that the U.S. military is preparing for an extended engagement in Iran.

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Concluding thoughts

Trump had opportunities to continue negotiations with Iran, but instead he chose to end them and start the war. The evidence that Iran was building or preparing to build nuclear bombs is non-existent. Trump insisted that this regime could not be trusted, but negotiations, like those in the past, may have opened the door to international inspectors, who would have been able to verify what Iran was doing.

The evidence that the Iran regime is terrible to its people is well documented. But that is beside the point. We tolerate un-democratic and cruel regimes elsewhere, in for example Russia, North Korea, Iraq, or deal with them in other ways, say, with sanctions. In a better world than we have, the U.S. would set an example to others, but under Trump and his allies, we have become an example of a narcissistic President with an oligarchic strain who tends to use the threat, if not the employment, of military action in attempts to get his way. If this continues, the U.S. will not have any reliable allies.