"Wasting Billions While Americans Struggle"

As Americans struggle to afford basics, billions vanish on costly troop deployments, exposing bad advice, misplaced priorities, and a White House dangerously out of touch economically.

The President is about to hopscotch across the country again, shaking hands, squinting into the lights, and assuring Americans that everything is just fine. Prices are stable. Wages are strong. The economy is humming. There is no affordability crisis; just a lot of people apparently confused by their own bank statements.

That’s the pitch. We know it by heart.

But here’s the problem: the credit card bill doesn’t lie. The grocery receipt doesn’t gaslight you. Rent doesn’t care what the teleprompter says. And when the month ends, millions of Americans are staring at numbers that make one old phrase painfully relevant again; champagne wishes with beer pockets.

So the real question isn’t whether there is an affordability crisis. Anyone who shops for food, pays insurance, or needs to buy their kid a new pair of sneakers already knows the answer to that.

The real question is this: who the hell is advising the President on affordability; and why are they steering him straight toward a cliff?

If I were still in the room where decisions get made, I’d tell him this: you don’t fix an affordability crisis by pretending it doesn’t exist. You don’t calm anxious families by dismissing their lived reality. And you certainly don’t claim fiscal discipline while quietly lighting half a billion dollars of taxpayer money on fire.

Yet that’s exactly what’s happening.

According to the Congressional Budget Office; about as nonpartisan and unexcitable as Washington gets, the administration’s sweeping deployment of National Guard troops to multiple U.S. cities cost taxpayers roughly $496 million over just seven months last year. Not a decade. Not a war. Seven months.

And if those deployments were continued at the same pace, the cost would balloon to $93 million per month, adding up to more than $1.1 billion in 2026.

That’s not abstract money. That’s real. That’s grocery money. Mortgage money. Prescription money. That’s the kind of number that should stop any serious affordability conversation cold.

Instead, it’s barely acknowledged.

These deployments; spanning cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Memphis, Portland, and Chicago; weren’t cheap photo ops. They came with operational costs, logistical costs, sustainment costs, and compensation that runs about $95,000 per Guard member per year, because Guard members are paid at active-duty rates when deployed.

In other words, this wasn’t symbolic spending. It was premium pricing.

And let’s be honest: no one is arguing that safety doesn’t matter. Americans want safe streets. They want order. They want to feel secure walking to their car at night. But safety and affordability aren’t opposing values; they’re competing budget lines. Every dollar spent in one direction is a dollar not spent elsewhere.

That’s what affordability is. Trade-offs.

So when the administration insists there’s no affordability crisis while approving deployments that burn through nearly half a billion dollars in months, people notice the disconnect. They may not know the CBO’s methodology, but they understand waste when they see it.

What makes this worse is the messaging whiplash. The White House insists these deployments made cities safer and that crime dropped. Fine. Let’s assume that’s true. Even then, why isn’t the President standing at a podium saying something simple and powerful?

“We are facing an affordability crisis. I hear you. And one of the first things I’m doing is cutting unnecessary deployments that cost taxpayers nearly $100 million a month.”

That’s not weakness. That’s leadership.

Instead, the line is denial; followed by reassurance, followed by silence when the bill comes due.

And the Supreme Court’s rejection of certain deployments, followed by partial withdrawals, only underscores the improvisational nature of the whole effort. This wasn’t a carefully calibrated, cost-conscious strategy. It was reactive, expensive, and politically combustible.

Which brings me back to the advisors.

Someone is telling the President that optics matter more than arithmetic. That posture beats policy. That voters won’t connect the dots between billion-dollar deployments and their shrinking disposable income.

That advice is wrong. Worse; it’s dangerous.

Affordability isn’t a messaging problem. It’s a math problem. And math has no ideology.

The President doesn’t need to invent new programs or miracle solutions. He needs to start with acknowledgment and restraint. He needs to stop hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars on deployments that even his own administration admits may return “in a much different and stronger form,” which is Washington-speak for even more expensive next time.

If you want credibility on affordability, start by respecting the ledger. Start by treating taxpayer dollars like they belong to the people who earned them; because they do.

Otherwise, all the rallies in the world won’t help when Americans open their bills and realize once again that they’re being told they’re drinking champagne, while holding a can of warm beer.

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