Please Explain: $200 Million for the Kennedy Center While Americans Are Drowning

Explain this. Now. How is it possible that the government can suddenly find $200 million to renovate the Kennedy Center, yet somehow claims there is no money to ensure Americans have healthcare, affordable housing, solid public education, or even the basic ability to survive? How do marble lobbies, luxury seating, and cosmetic upgrades to a theater take priority over people who are choosing between rent and medicine, food and heat, childcare and keeping the lights on? Millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Public schools are collapsing under chronic underfunding. Rent has exploded while wages stagnate. Families are one emergency away from homelessness. Students are buried in debt. Seniors ration prescriptions. Parents skip meals so their kids can eat. And yet—when it comes to a building—the checkbook flies open. Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by calling this a “budgetary necessity” or a “cultural investment.” Culture does not exist in a vacuum. Art does not flourish while people are starving, sick, and exhausted from surviving a system that refuses to help them. You govern a nation in crisis. A nation where survival has become a luxury. A nation where basic dignity is treated as optional. So explain it: • Why is there money for elite renovations but not universal healthcare? • Why is there money for prestige projects but not affordable housing? • Why is there money for appearances but not for people? Budgets are moral documents. And this one makes your values painfully clear. The American people are not asking for extravagance. We are asking for life—healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us, schools that actually educate, housing we can afford, and a government that prioritizes human beings over buildings. Explain this choice. Justify it. And then fix it. Because Americans are done being told there is “no money” while watching you spend it everywhere except where it actually matters.