"Let It Be an Arms Race"

In late May of this year, President Donald Trump's special envoy for arms  control bragged before a Washington think tank that the U.S. government was prepared to outspend Russia and China to win a new nuclear arms race. "The president has made it clear that we have a tied and true practice here," he remarked. "We now how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion."

This comment was not out of line for a Trump administration official. Indeed, back in December of 2016, shortly after his election, Trump  himself proclaimed that the United States would "greatly strengthen and expand" the U.S. government's nuclear weapons program. adding provocatively: "Let it be an arms race. We will outmarch them at every pass and outlast them all." In a fresh challenge to Russia and China, delivered in October 2018, Trump again extolled his decision to win the nuclear arms face, explaining: "We have more money than anybody, by far."

And, in fact, the Trump administration has followed through on its promise to pour American tax dollars into the arms race through a vast expansion of the U.S. military budget. In 2019 alone (the last year for which worldwide spending figures are available), spending on the U.S. military soared to $732 billion. (Other military analysts, who included military-related spending put the figure at $1.25 trillion.) As a result, the United States, with about 4 percent of the world's population, accounted for 38 percent of world  military spending. Indeed, the United States sent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.

In February 2020, the administration introduced a 2021 fiscal year budget proposal that would devote 55 percent of the federal government's $1.3 trillion discretionary spending to the military. By 2030,the military proportion of the federal budget would rise to 62 percent.

Trump has continued pouring money into purchasing Lockheed Martin's F-35 combat aircraft, which, though an operational disaster, had cost U.S. taxpayers $1.4 trillion by 2017. Another pet project, quickly embraced by Trump, was the newest and costliest U.S. aircraft carrier delivered with fanfare to the Navy in late May 2017 for $13 billion. It only problem was that it had difficulty launching lanes from its deck and facilitating their landing. Yet another very expensive military project is U.S. missile defense.

America's 5,800 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched from and sea, and air, provide staggering firepower -- more than enough to destroy most life on earth. The current nuclear arsenal, however, is viewed as insufficient by the Trump administration, which is engaged in a vast 'modernization' program to rebuild the entire nuclear weapons complex including new production facilities, warheads, bombs, and delivery systems. The price tag for this enormous nuclear buildup, which will occur over the next three decades, has been estimated as at least $1.5 trillion.

ADDENDUMS:

*As many as 23 million voters are at risk of eviction.

*More than 97,000 kids in the U.S. were infected in the last two weeks in July, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.

*A National Parents Union poll of 500 K-12 parents found that 34% of white parents feeling uncomfortable of sending kids back to school, and just 19% of nonwhite parents feel the same.