The National Credit Card Has a War Department
Washington prefers to file war spending, debt interest, deficits, and gasoline under separate headings, as though a family can ignore its credit-card balance because every purchase came with a different receipt. The precise figures circulating in this cost-stacking argument may depend on the date and the calculator, but the practical complaint is sturdy: patriotic language does not make a recurring bill disappear.
A household has one checking account, one gas tank, and one increasingly nervous calculator. The Pentagon gets the mission, the Treasury gets the interest, and the driver gets the receipt. Officials can admire each invoice in isolation; workers and families get the combined total at the bottom. That is not fiscal strategy. It is a filing system with a flag on it.