By Ron Paul
The US Senate worked through the weekend on the 鈥淏ig Beautiful Bill.鈥 The goal was to pass it quickly to ensure the House will then pass it and send it to President Trump鈥檚 desk before the July 4th holiday.
However, disagreements among Republican Senators over reductions in spending on programs including Medicaid and food stamps as well as language in the bill eliminating 鈥渃lean energy鈥 tax credits were preventing Senate Republican leadership from getting enough votes to pass the bill.
Also, some Republicans disagree with other Republicans in both the House and Senate on increasing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Many conservatives see this income tax deduction as encouraging states to maintain high taxes to fund big governments.
One item in the BBB that few Republicans are objecting to is the bill鈥檚 increase in military spending. The House version of the BBB added 150 billion dollars to the Pentagon鈥檚 already bloated budget. The Senate bill gave the military-industrial complex 156 billion dollars.
Increasing military spending contradicts President Trump鈥檚 promise to stop wasting money on endless wars that have nothing to do with ensuring the security of the American people.
Some of the BBB鈥檚 military spending will be used to put troops on the border. I support strengthening border security. However, I do not support using the military for domestic law enforcement, which includes enforcing immigration laws. Soldiers are trained to view people as potential enemies, not as innocent civilians to be protected. Introducing this mindset into domestic law enforcement will lead to abuses of liberty.
Increasing spending on militarism while cutting spending on programs that help low-income Americans is bad politics and bad policy. Polls show that the majority of Americans, including many Republicans, do not support overseas intervention.
The growing opposition to our hyper-interventionist foreign policy is easy to understand. The US has engaged in numerous military actions in many countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria since the beginning of the 21st century. The American people pay for this militarism in several ways. One is the 鈥渋nflation tax鈥 imposed by the Federal Reserve in order to monetize the debt incurred by the US government for endless wars. President Trump has turned his back on his antiwar supporters by bombing Iran and by increasing military spending to over a trillion dollars.
A return to a noninterventionist foreign policy is the only way we will be able to begin to pay down the national debt and restore a government that adheres to the constitutional limits on its powers and respects all the people鈥檚 rights all the time.
Ron Paul served in the House of Representatives. This commentary was published by the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.