Day 748: Trump proposes spending 114x more on border wall than seeking cure for childhood cancers

Money is finite, much as Republicans would have Americans believe otherwise when they’re in office. A dollar spent on Thing A can’t be used on Thing B.

During a lengthy, low-energy State of the Union Tuesday evening, Donald Trump proposed relatively few domestic policy ideas.

One that he did toss out, however, dealt with finding a cure for childhood cancers: $50 million per year for the next 10 years. By contrast, Trump is asking for 114-times more related to a border wall this year: $5.7 billion.

Democrats, and most pundits, were far from impressed by Trump’s paltry number.

Curing cancer has been a dream for a century, and while significant in-roads have been made for many types of cancers, there’s still a long way to go.

If $50 million seems like a paltry sum for something so challenging, that’s because it is. The money would likely be spent by giving various grants to different institutions already studying treatments. If Trump is truly interested in taking a moonshot now to find a cure, billions of dollars annually would likely need to be allocated. The sooner that a cure or effective treatment is found, the more children could be saved, fewer families would suffer from medical debt and the next government moonshot could be taken.

Instead, eager for a few claps at the State of the Union, Trump threw out what sounds like a good chunk of change, but in reality is nothing more than chump change unlikely to actually change anything.

748 days in, 714 to go

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