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Early Thursday morning, the House agreed to bring Donald Trump’s budget to the floor after the Senate passed its version earlier this week. The bill creates a police state, setting aside $45 billion for construction of internal prison camps like the one Mr. Trump visited in Florida to celebrate the bill’s passage. The budget invests in these camps while it cuts funding for food, medicine, and education and gives money to the wealthiest amongst us. These spending priorities reflect the worst of what we are.
This budget is compassion’s repudiation. It rewards the powerful and punishes the weak, the poor, the sick, the stranger. I swear it reflects no values of mine, but a good portion of our populace thinks it is beautiful.
How broken is America’s moral compass that is should point in such a direction!
And the part Trump and Vance are proudest of is the money they got for building concentration camps as part of their effort to deport millions.
“Everything else — the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,” Vance declared. Throwing millions off their health insurance is not minutia, but hey, they might get coverage if they go to work as camp wardens.
The vile rush to deport 15 million people (something this budget sets aside staggering funds to achieve) is hardly new in history. We thought we were better. We are not. It is almost too painful to contemplate, but we must.
Here’s a thought experiment. Consider the Nazi board game, Juden Raus! Here’s how the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the game:
Juden Raus! (Jews Out!) was a board game in which players competed to collect as many Jews as possible and send them to Palestine. The players rolled the dice, and if they landed on a circle that represented a Jewish business — they collected a cone with an anti-Jewish stereotype on it, which was then placed on top of the player’s token.
The game ended when one player had collected six “Jews.” The game promoted Nazi Germany’s policy of forced Jewish emigration.
Now imagine rebranding the game by replacing Juden with the current hateful propaganda term illegals. Put Trump’s name and image on the box. Would it sell in America?
You know it would.
Earlier this year, Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem cut a promotional video at the CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador. Doubling down, yesterday, Trump himself proudly launched the first of what he promises will be a chain of American camps, complete with a moat full of alligators and pythons. It’s his update to the older version that used snarling German Shepherds to terrify prisoners.
If compassion is not your thing, it’s worth noting that the CATO Institute claims these deportations will cost America nearly another trillion dollars. This calculation includes the lost tax revenue from immigrants as well as the direct costs of enforcement.
Morally and fiscally repellent, these camps are about to become commonplace, as established by law and funded by this “beautiful bill” - the very same law that will strip Americans of health insurance, take food away from children, end the fight against climate change, all to give more money to the wealthiest amongst us.
Congress may soon pass Trump’s law. The shame of it will last for all time.
Edwin Eisendrath hosts "The Big Picture" on WCPT820 AM/ Heartland Signal. [ [link removed] ] He's the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools. You can follow him on BlueSky at eisendrath.net [ [link removed] ] and Substack at “It’s the Democracy, Stupid.” [ [link removed] ] Read the original column here [ [link removed] ].

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