Let me start out by stating that I didn’t vote for DJT, I’ve disliked the guy as long as I can remember, and I believe the People of the United States have done our nation an enormous disservice by allowing ourselves to be fooled by an unfit, unqualified, unwise, but very persuasive candidate.
That said, I’ve been seeing a lot of Tweets and Facebook posts similar to this, lately…
The security of the First Family provided by the Secret Service is not relevant to Food Stamps or any other budget subject matter about which one may argue, for or against. They’re not related at all.
The First Lady might be a wonderful person, or she may be horrible. I don’t know, and I don’t care. And it’s not really relevant to whether protection is deserved, or how expensive it is. Same for her son, Barron. It’s not his fault that his father was elected President.
Protection of the President, and the First Family, wherever they go, wherever they live, has been the law of the land for a long time.
New York City is expensive. If we had elected anybody else who lives in New York City, it would be similarly expensive to protect that home.
The First Kid is a school-aged kid. His parents have made a decision to keep him in the school he’s been attending, rather than to uproot him and move him to some school in or near Washington D.C.. So what? That’s up to his parents, and nobody else.
Go ahead. Pick your favorite President of all time. Now think about this hypothetical scenario: Your favorite President gets elected. The Secret Service provides security to your favorite President’s First Family. Would you think it’s OK to say that your favorite President needs to move the First Family someplace which is cheaper to protect? I mean, does that not sound ludicrous?
Again, DJT was not my choice. I’m embarrassed and ashamed and acutely irritated that he’s the POTUS. The fact, however, is that his is the POTUS, and that is the end of the discussion as to whether his family gets protected, or how much that costs. Costs which are irrelevant to arguments about welfare, education, infrastructure, tax reform, bank regulation, military, whatever.
You can surely make an argument for Food Stamps – and so can I. That argument is not made stronger by making comparisons to an unrelated law and the costs for it. Rather, these failures to stick to the point make the arguments far weaker.
