Linda Bilmes

So, for example, when President Biden decided to support Ukraine and he fought hard in Congress to get money for Ukraine, he also, at the same time, to make absolutely sure that the public wouldn't feel any impact otherwise.

At the gas pump, he released half of the strategic petroleum reserve to make sure that we didn't feel anything.

Now, if he had done what had been done in all previous wars, going back historically in the U.S., he might have said, this is so important, this is so critical to freedom, that we're asking everybody to pay two cents more per gallon to support Ukraine.

But, I mean, that kind of thinking was anathema, right?

I mean, and now you see...

Going even further in the Trump administration saying, you know, not only are we going to do this war, but we're going to vastly increase military budget and we're going to cut taxes even more.

I mean, there's no construct at all in which anyone is saying this costs a lot of money and we should therefore pay for it now.

And when you go back, for example, to President Truman or President Roosevelt or President Wilson or whatever, they had hundreds of speeches to the public saying, this is so important.

We have to pay for it now.

We can't pass these costs on to our children.

The worst thing we can do is bestow a legacy to our children of paying for this war.

We're going to pay as we go.

So we have the opposite situation now.