Column By John Young
“Enough is enough,” he wrote in his veto message.
At least we must assume he wrote it.
“My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies.”
Oh, he did write it — he who dodged grade-school capitalization.
It was his first veto of the term, and for what? To kill a not-controversial bill to help a batch of smallish communities finance a much-needed water pipeline.
The problem for those communities: Though many of the veto’s rural victims no doubt voted for the guy, they are in true-blue Colorado, my state, which wouldn’t vote for him if he left gold ingots on doorsteps.
The Wizard of BS said it was about austerity. If you believe that, you’ve been in a drug-induced coma.
This president doesn’t know the meaning of austerity. He believes only in conquest and destruction.
Health coverage? Infrastructure? The environment? When it comes to actual needs other than those of billionaires, oil executives, and crypto kings, we are wasting away in Vendettaville.
Austerity? All we see are the inexcusable excesses of a self-serving executive.
Where to begin? How about the jet Qatar “gave” to him? The actual gift would be from you and me in tax dollars, a minimum of $400 million, maybe $1 billion, to retrofit it as Air Force One, later to wow visitors from golden cinder blocks at his presidential library.
How about the military parade he ordered? It ostensibly was to honor 100 years of the Army, but just happened to also denote 79 years of him. That cost $40 million.
The destruction of the White House’s East Wing will cost at least $300 million. We’re supposed to not concern ourselves with that because of all the gifts from big-money interests supposedly to finance it. “No cost to you!” Of course, big-money gifts never come without reciprocal public policy. Or why give them?
Speaking of policy: Do you think you got your money’s worth – Reuters estimates taxpayers will swallow $340 million — from the months of sidewalk duty carried out by National Guard troops in — surprise! — blue states? The technical term for this use of the guard is “nationalized.” The more appropriate term: “vendetta-ized.”
Austerity. Austerity.
Homeland Security recently spent $172 million on not one but two Gulfstream private jets so that Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller can be wherever ugly Americanism demands a photo op.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth assessed you and me $6 million to fly hundreds of generals and admirals to Quantico Base, Va., apparently because they needed advice on their body mass. Did someone take away Pete’s Discord keys for messages like this? If so, Zoom is free.
My goodness, to think how much we are spending right now with a massive military presence, 15,000 troops in the Caribbean, as we breathe one man’s hot air down Venezuela’s neck and blow up little boats on illegal pretexts.
Speaking of policy that will sound foreign to you: Our government in 2025 gave Argentina $20 billion to bolster the peso, putting its soybean farmers in a better market position than tariffs put ours.
We could go on and on to illustrate why talk of “austerity” is just a joke coming from a vengeance-driven president.
However, let us close with data from a watchdog entity that calls itself Trump Golf Tracker. It records how much of this president’s job is spent on the fairways, and computes the cost.
The tally is that last year he spent 88 days at golf clubs, almost one-fourth of a calendar year, the equivalent of June through August. That’s Mike Johnson time.
Trump Golf Tracker uses simple math to calculate the costs of these taxpayer-paid excursions using a 2019 Government Accountability Office report on the cost of four trips during the president’s first term.
The total: $110.6 million for just one year, give or take a mulligan.
“Enough is enough.”
Can we all agree with the man?
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
