A Taxing Situation
It’s time to get angry about how our money is being spent
I don’t consider myself a money person. I’m not really motivated by money and too much talk about finances causes my mind to wander and my eyes to glaze over. But lately, I have been spending more time thinking about the money I am sending to the U.S. Treasury and what is being done with it.
I am typically fine with paying taxes for the services we get in return, even if the services are ones I don’t need or use. My values are such that I want what is best for all of us. That is not virtue-signaling; it is normal for most of us. “We all do better when we all do better.”
But as I watch what is happening with our tax dollars in the year of 2026 under the … cough … leadership of Donald J. Trump, I am no longer a happy-go-lucky taxpayer.
I’m angry about how our money is being spent. And I am really angry that more Republicans, who claim to care about these things more than anyone else, aren’t angry too.
Here is a short list of what our tax dollars are currently funding:
The destruction of the east wing of OUR house so Trump can have an ostentatious, tacky ballroom that no American citizen (other than Trump himself) asked for.
The war in Iran that has not been approved by Congress. It has depleted our arsenal of weapons, is killing and injuring our soldiers and ruining what is left of our tattered reputation across the globe. Iran is in control of the narrative and making demands that they might just be able to get.
The outrageous funding of ICE that really deserves its own essay. But I’ll just add some sub-bullets:
The purchase of mega-warehouses across the country for over $1 billion (at inflated prices). And now, after figuring out this is an unworkable approach to holding people, they now are trying to sell them, at a loss, to get rid of them.
The purchase of a fleet of 2,500 vehicles, most of which sit unused in storage facilities and parking garages. I personally watched as about 50 of these vehicles were delivered to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where they were parked in rows resembling a car dealership before being put back on carriers and taken to more discreet storage.
ICE spends an average of $17,000 per HOUR to operate chartered deportations and detainee transfer flights. They are authorized to spend up to $1.5 billion on these flights. Thanks to the great work of MN 50501 volunteer Nick Benson, we know that those flights continue out of MSP. Each week, with no due process, dozens of shackled people are removed from Minnesota and their loved ones.
And let’s not forget that work continues along the Mexican border on that God-damned wall that is costing taxpayers $46.5 billion.
Just last week, we learned that DHS is buying the Appleton, Minnesota Prairie Correctional center from CoreCivic for $500,000,000, a facility that is valued at $14,000,000 by the local tax officials. It is bad enough that we will have an ICE concentration camp in Minnesota but to have our taxes go to paying this obviously inflated price just adds more insult to more injury.
Meanwhile, with this purchase, Appleton, Swift County and the local school district will operate with a 30% budget deficit because the $800,000 CoreCivic pays in property taxes will no longer be coming in. The federal government is exempt from paying those taxes. This basically offsets any argument on the right that the reopening of Prairie Detention Center will somehow be a boon to the local economy.
Now let’s talk about the money that is NOT being spent and why.
Trump is withholding federal funds from Democratic-led states through targeted grant cancellations, Medicaid withholding, and disaster relief denials ($227 million). This includes terminated clean-energy grants ($7.5 billion), suspended healthcare funding ($1.067 billion), and stalled disaster declarations.
So, blue states like California, Minnesota and New York send taxes we pay to the federal government, and Trump is refusing to give us back what is owed in services.
To put this in the simplest terms – our money is going to what we don’t want or need and not going to the things we voted for and do need.
This is exactly what Republicans have been complaining about for decades. The federal government “wasting” our money, they would say, on things they didn’t like or want.
So, what does that mean? Are we only happy when we get what we want? I suppose to a certain extent, that is basic, human nature. But here is the difference.
Republicans (and mostly the richest among them) prefer to not pay taxes or pay the least amount possible – services be damned.
Democrats want our tax dollars allocated for the services that help the most people. Many of these services are those that Musk and his DOGE bros cut, like assistance to starving and sick children around the world through USAID. Those cuts already have resulted in the deaths of an estimated 700,000 people, and the ghastly number grows every day.
The bottom line is that our tax dollars are going to enrich a corrupt group of people at the very top of our government.
Our tax dollars are going to an unrestrained Department of Homeland Security that is terrorizing our neighbors and turning this country into an occupied police-state.
Our tax dollars are being spent on an ill-conceived, illegal foreign war that the vast majority of Americans find stupid, or disgusting, or both.
And finally, just over the weekend acting Attorney General Todd Blanche managed to squeak by the two dissenting Republican Senators holding up the confirmation of him as AG by issuing a written document that purports to rescind Trump’s controversial “anti-weaponization” fund and limit the tax immunity that Trump’s own government gave him in the same settlement.
Since we are talking about taxes let’s sit with that for a minute.
While we have to follow the laws of our tax codes, file them truthfully, pay what we owe on time or risk prosecution - Trump and his sons will not. An exclusion has been carved out just for them. The first question everyone should be asking is “Why?” It would appear a crime has already been committed because otherwise why do they need immunity?
If this one fact doesn’t get your blood boiling, nothing will.
Something tells me that even tax-hating middle- and lower-income Republicans aren’t any happier about where their tax dollars are going than snowflakes like me.
I guess we’ll find out in November.
Call to Action
By the time you read this the primary election will be mostly over. We have nearly 3 months until the general election and this will be the time for all of us to be talking to our friends and neighbors about the election. When you are out door-knocking for the candidates you support, be sure to ask those voters if they like where their tax dollars are going. It’s a good open-ended question to get the conversation started, especially with undecided voters.
Lisa Erbes, Co- Leader Indivisible Twin Cities