Trump’s budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why
Friday, March 17, 2017 - Filed in: General Interest
The following is a reprint of an article by Alexandra Petri appearing on the Washington Post web site. This healthy bit of sarcasm is just too rich to pass by.
Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration, despite its wonderful macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds. These people are wimps. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has called it a “hard power budget” which is, I think, the name of an exercise program where you eat only what you can catch, pump up your guns and then punch the impoverished in the face. This, conveniently, is also what the budget does.
This budget will make America a lean, mean fighting machine with bulging, rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat. America has been weak and soft for too long. BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate.
Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration, despite its wonderful macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds. These people are wimps. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has called it a “hard power budget” which is, I think, the name of an exercise program where you eat only what you can catch, pump up your guns and then punch the impoverished in the face. This, conveniently, is also what the budget does.
This budget will make America a lean, mean fighting machine with bulging, rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat. America has been weak and soft for too long. BUT HOW WILL I SURVIVE ON THIS BUDGET? you may be wondering. I AM A HUMAN CHILD, NOT A COSTLY FIGHTER JET. You may not survive, but that is because you are SOFT and WEAK, something this budget is designed to eliminate.
What are we cutting?
The State Department, by 29 percent: Right now, all the State Department’s many qualified employees do is sit around being sad that they are never consulted about anything. This is, frankly, depressing, and it is best to put them out of their misery. Besides, they are only trained in Soft Diplomacy, like a woman would do, and NOBODY wants that. Only HARD POWER now that we have a man in charge who thought the name Rex Tillerson was not manly enough and rechristened himself Wayne Tracker. With the money we will save on these sad public servants, we will be able to buy lots of GUNS and F-35s and other cool things that go BOOM and POW and PEW PEW PEW.
Environmental Protection Agency: We absolutely do not need this. Clean rivers and breathable air are making us SOFT and letting the Chinese and the Russians get the jump on us. We must go back to the America that was great, when the air was full of coal and danger and the way you could tell if the air was breathable was by carrying a canary around with you at all times, perched on your leathery, coal-dust-covered finger. Furthermore, we will cut funding to Superfund cleanup in the EPA because the only thing manlier than clean water is DIRTY water.
Agriculture Department: NO MORE OF THIS NAMBY-PAMBY “GATHERING” NONSENSE. We will be HUNTERS again. This is also why we are cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children: Let them FIGHT for their meat or have NONE.
Commerce Department: This will lose its funding to prepare people for coastal disasters, because in the future we will all be so strong that we can stare down the sea and make it recede by flexing our bulging muscles.
Labor Department: There will be no LABOR in the future. Labor is what women do, I think. All fetuses will burst out of wombs brandishing an Uzi on each arm. (Also, we will cut the funding to the people who would have explained that this is not how birth or labor works.)
We are decreasing funding to the National Institutes of Health because in the future we will cure disease by punching it, or, if that fails, sending drones after it. Also, we will buy more planes and guns to shoot airborne viruses out of the sky.
Affordable housing is a luxury and we are going to get rid of it. Donald Trump does not live in affordable housing and neither should you.
We don’t need to fund historic sites. Those parks have sassed the administration enough and they must get what is coming to them.
A few other things we are cutting:
- Chemical Safety Board: Give us CHEMICAL DANGER, which sounds way more metal.
- Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Instead, anyone who turns on the radio will be able to hear audio footage of a Trump son shooting a rare land mammal.
- National Endowment for the Arts: The NEA will be destroyed and replaced with an armored helicopter with a shark painted on it.
- National Endowment for the Humanities: The NEH will be replaced with half a fighter jet and a bunch of drones. This is the only art America needs.
- U.S. Institute of Peace: Wimpy.
- U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness: We will all live outdoors in the new Hard Power America and we will pump steel together and shout “GRRR” and there will be no mental illness because it is only in your mind.
- Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: This is counterintuitive given Wilson’s track record of racism, which is no longer the handicap that it once was, but you must remember that he also tried to start the League of Nations, which was like the United Nations but more so.
There is a $2.6 billion line in the budget to pay for the wall until Mexico pays for the wall. I think? Sounds right. The education budget is also cut so I can’t tell if this logic makes sense.
All schoolchildren will be taught by an F-35 wearing a Make America Great Again hat. They will also have new school choice options including the choice not to afford any school at all, because at school you are taught things like grammar and pronouns and spelling and history, and these are all potentially inimical to the future we are trying to build. We will also be cutting Meals on Wheels programs to feed children, because they are not improving performance as we would like. Feed children just to feed them? What are we, SOFT? No. No we are not.
AMERICA WILL BE STRONGER THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN! Anyone who survives will be a gun covered in the fur of a rare mammal, capable of fighting disease with a single muscular flex. RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!
It will be great.