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Comment by smolder | Hacker News Reader

War and enriching military contractors, creating the TSA, subsidies to businesses that don't need them, etc. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FiW5I95R5xg/hqdefault.jpg

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Say what you want about him, but Trump did run an anti-war and anti-military spending campaign. The budgets he's approved are a huge betrayal to his base. There's spending on border security and the wall that's not really happening, but that's chump change compared to entitlements and broader military spending.

So it seems like we have the choice of voting for left-wing politicians who run on increasing spending on new forms of entitlements, and spending will increase precipitously - or voting for right-wing politicians who run on not spending like the neocons do, then just do it anyway, and spending will increase precipitously.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/donald-trump-defense... "Donald Trump on Wednesday called for eliminating the sequester on defense spending and increasing military spending to boost troop levels and the number of ships and aircraft."

The Senate is largely tilted towards rural areas, and hence Republicans. This provides a pretty natural check on the spending ambitions of Democratic presidents, except in rare circumstances. No such check exists for Republican presidents, which is why our deficits are soaring despite the current record economic expansion. Take that into account when you vote.

The rural Republican base are just the pawns used to build a voting block that can win elections. The party doesn't actually serve them. That's why it makes so many appeals to them on election cycles and then always turns around and only favors policies that benefit wealthy business owners.

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