When we were kids growing up in the industrial valley just east of the city, our dad had standard advice in response to any ethnic slur that was intended to make one group of our Braddock neighbors feel like they were less than the others.
“Remember,” he would say while pointing toward the steel mill at the end of town, “it will always be them — the Carnegies and Fricks — against all of us. And they mean to divide us.”
There were a few notable exceptions then as there are today. George Westinghouse and H.J. Heinz were industrial barons, but they were not robber barons. The others saw human labor as just one more bit of raw material that went into the products that made their fortunes.
President Trump’s new ballroom — and the Republican Senate proposal to appropriate $1 billion of taxpayers’ money to build it — are the latest reminders that things have not changed. That money should be spent on the well-being of American families and not on pipe dreams and high-life fantasies.
A quick internet search will produce an enthusiastic Trump promising the public at various times that the ballroom will be built “free of charge.” He has said, “I’m paying for it,” “we’re donating a $400 million ballroom,” “no charge to the taxpayer whatsoever” and “rich people are paying for it.”
So, the $1 billion appropriation is a punch in the gut to average American families who have to choose between gasoline for their daily commutes and other necessities of life because of Trump’s war in Iran. According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, “gas is a larger share of the budget for lower-income households, so rising prices hit those with the least room in their budgets the hardest.”
The $1 billion appropriation comes when local hospitals are closing because Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” cut healthcare to millions of Americans. Federal Medicaid and CHIP contributions will be reduced by more than $900 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
In this land of plenty, the Trump administration has cut food assistance — SNAP benefits — for millions of Americans. An April New York Times article featured a single mother of two teenagers from South Carolina who summed it up by saying, “They have no idea what the reality is like for the rest of us that are looking to work and just trying to survive.”
A recent Wall Street Journal report showed that while corporate profits have risen to the highest percentage of gross domestic income since 1980, labor compensation in the United States has fallen to its lowest percentage of gross domestic income.
James Talarico, the Texas Democratic candidate for United States senator, got it right at a February town hall when he was asked if his calls for economic fair play were a call for “class warfare.”
With the shared wisdom of a millworker from Braddock, Talarico said, “It’s the billionaires waging war against the rest of us, and, right now, the billionaires are winning.”
“It’s why everyone is so angry right now. It’s why, no matter how hard you work, you can’t seem to get ahead. The American people are not asking for a whole lot: A job we don’t hate, a house big enough to raise a family in, and a little left over so we can go on vacation every once in a while. That is a lot harder than it should be in America.”
And a $1 billion appropriation for a ballroom doesn’t help.