When I was growing up, Americans argued about priorities.
Should we build another freeway or another school? Should we cut taxes or expand education? Should we spend more on scientific research or reduce the deficit? Should we invest more in our military or more in our own people?
Economists even had a name for it: guns or butter.
The phrase wasn’t really about guns or butter. It was about hard economic choices. Every dollar spent in one place couldn’t be spent somewhere else. Especially back when we balanced our budgets …
Somewhere along the way, we seem to have stopped having that conversation.
Politicians can give speeches all day long about how great America is. They can tell us we’re the strongest nation on Earth, the richest nation on Earth, the envy of the world.
Mouthing inspiring patriotic speeches is easy.
But at the end of the day, budgets do the real talking.
Budgets don’t lie.
A federal budget tells us who we really are. It reveals our priorities. It tells us what we fear, what we cherish and what we’re willing to sacrifice. It is, in the end, the most honest statement a government ever makes.
Today, the statement our budgets make is changing.
The Pentagon is seeking a defense budget approaching $1.5 trillion for fiscal year 2027, a 44% increase for the (newly renamed) Department of War, according to the White House’s own “Rebuilding Our Military” budget fact sheet. We’re discussing multiple tens of billions more for a war with Iran that nobody voted for. The War Department is encouraging American manufacturers to prepare for expanded weapons production. National security has become the organizing principle behind more of our public policy.
Maybe that’s necessary. Maybe the world has become more dangerous. But we’ve also noticed presidents with sagging poll numbers tend to find wars. We’ve seen that movie before.
Yet if we’re going to roll over for Departments of War and guns versus butter, shouldn’t the American people be having a serious conversation about what we’re choosing to give up in return?
Because while military spending grows, we’ve also watched proposals to reduce, restructure, or eliminate programs that touch ordinary Americans every single day.
Medicaid has faced significant reductions.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency faces restructuring and budget reductions.
Some 386,000 civilian federal positions have been eliminated or targeted through layoffs, buyouts and attrition, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Scientific research has slowed as agencies face hiring freezes and funding uncertainty.
National parks have fewer employees.
Diplomatic and foreign assistance programs have been slashed to near irrelevance.
Whether you support every one of those programs isn’t really the point.
The point is that every budget is a choice:
Almost no American will ever fly an F-35.
Almost no American will ever launch a missile.
Almost no American will ever command a destroyer.
Almost no American will ever operate a hypersonic weapons system.
But almost every American will, at some point in life, use or depend on the very programs now competing for what’s left of the budget.
We’ll all collect Social Security.
We’ll rely on Medicare.
We’ll hope FEMA shows up after a wildfire, hurricane or flood.
We’ll drive on federal highways.
Our children will attend public schools that need to prepare them for a rapidly changing world.
We’ll benefit from scientific research that leads to new medicines.
We’ll visit national parks with our children and grandchildren.
We’ll expect our government to perform the ordinary, unglamorous work that keeps a civilized society functioning, from weather prediction to food safety to consumer protections.
This isn’t an argument against a strong national defense. America needs one. The question is whether the military protects the best things about this country, or whether the military-industrial complex crowds them out.
We can afford both. But only with discipline, and only with honest debate — and the debate part is disappearing.
We’ve entered wars of choice while depleting serious defensive stockpiles, with almost no public discussion. Defense budgets grow automatically. Domestic programs get trimmed in the name of fiscal responsibility that never seems to apply to the Pentagon. I noticed those Department of Government Efficiency bros never quite made it over there.
Every budget forces a choice about where the next dollar goes.
You. Me. Our families. Our future.
Versus ever shinier forms of destructive power.
Politicians like to tell us who America is. Our budget tells us who we’ve chosen to become.
If we no longer meaningfully weigh that choice, if our attention span has been dulled to indifference, then democracy becomes less a shared project and more something happening to us instead of by us.
Yes, today we’re facing a budgeting problem.
But even more, we’re facing a democracy problem.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
