HOW TO PAY FOR TRUMP'S $54 BILLION DEFENSE SPENDING INCREASE--A MODEST PROPOSAL

On Monday, February 27, President Trump announced his new "public safety and national security" budget. The centerpiece is a $54 billion raise for the military, to be paid for by an equal package of cuts to social, educational, environmental, health and other "non-essential" government programs. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of State reportedly are first in line at the chopping block.

David Koch, worth $39.6 billion--Will he be the first to pitch in?
Credit: Gage Skidmore

Unfortunately, $54 billion in cuts to those programs will do some serious damage. As quoted in the NYT article cited above, longtime Republican budget specialist Bill Hoagland comments "I don't know how you take $54 billion out without wholesale taking out entire departments."

In other words, boosting our safety and security by pumping up our military muscle will inflict a lot of pain on school children and their teachers, workers, poor people, disabled people, the unemployed, and those of us who have gotten used to clean air and water, safe food and drugs, and a functioning federal government.

However, there's a simple way to come up with $54 billion, and one that will only impact fewer than two dozen people rather than hundreds of millions of us. Why not ask Trump, his cabinet members, and his billionaire backers to help out?

A few minutes of online research shows that Trump and his cabinet are worth around $13 billion. If we add in just the top dozen Trump supporters--billionaires like the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer, Peter Thiel and Sheldon Adelson, all of whom pumped a lot of cash into his campaign--we find that they're worth around $163 billion. So Trump, his cabinet, and twelve of his biggest backers have a combined worth of $176 billion.

Given their obvious patriotism, and the fervent support for Trump demonstrated by their generous contributions to his election, I'm sure that these munificent ladies and gentlemen would be happy to contribute, say, 30% of their net worth to pay for the bigger and better armed forces we so urgently need. That would neatly cover the $54 billion Trump has earmarked, and, remarkably, all of those noble donors would still be incredibly rich.

Nor will their generosity go unrewarded if Trump's proposed tax cuts become law. According to Forbes, the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population will receive 24 percent of the $6.2 trillion in tax cuts, or just under $1.5 trillion, and will see their after-tax income increase by 14.2 percent. With that $1.5 trillion pie to divide up, I'm guessing it would not be long before those generous billionaires will be even richer than before. Talk about a win-win solution!

Ladies and gentlemen of the billionaire class, please consider this an open invitation, not just to Trump, his cabinet and his top dozen supporters, but to all 540 U.S. billionaires. With your combined worth of $2.4 trillion, just think of what you can accomplish.

Who will be the first to step up? Bill, Warren, Jeff, Mark, Larry, Michael, Charles, David, Larry, Jim, Alice, Sheldon . . .?