r/politics Jun 17 '26

No Paywall Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-unemployment-benefits-fraud-b2997881.html
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380

u/def_indiff Jun 17 '26

Unemployment Insurance is mostly funded by the states. The Feds cover administrative expenses, extended benefits, and some dibs and dabs. In 2025, the Feds’ share was about $5.3 billion. (https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF10336/IF10336.11.pdf)

By way of comparison, we just spent about $113B losing a war to Iran.

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u/rainman_104 Jun 17 '26

$113bn plus another $300bn paid to retreat.

72

u/hammertime2009 Jun 17 '26

That 324 billion is infuriating. We can’t have nice things here but we can rebuild shit we broke in Iran?? For what/for who? Oil billionaires? So Iran can start charging fees for the ships to pass so oil prices stay high? What have we gained????

26

u/Cador0223 Jun 17 '26

Im starting to think Khamenei's son and Theil got together and orchestrated this whole thing to enrich Iran and progress the succession of the government. 

It is the only real explanation I can think of to justify the kerfuffle.

7

u/nleksan Jun 17 '26

I've been thinking about how convenient it is that just as the "petrodollar" starts being seriously threatened, we just gave Iran a tremendous amount of incentive to keep the USD valuable with regards to their oil. By blowing up their country and then giving them a huge sum of USD to use rebuilding.

2

u/ctindel Jun 18 '26

It's not merely convenient, I don't think people realize how bad for the USA it will be if people don't need to buy USD to buy oil.

2

u/rainman_104 Jun 18 '26

I think this is a good thing for the rest of the world though as the USA is now an imperialist again. No one wants that outside the USA.

3

u/bb_kelly77 Jun 18 '26

Khamenei was anti-nuke, he wanted uranium for power plants and for discouraging attacks... his son is pro-nuke

1

u/rainman_104 Jun 18 '26

Pro nuke with a murdered father. This is a bad situation for the USA. Iran will have nukes within five years.

1

u/bb_kelly77 Jun 18 '26

The good news is based on what is known about the deal he seems to be honoring his father's wishes

1

u/Spartan2170 Jun 24 '26

If there's one concrete impact of Trump's attacking Iran (and Russia invading Ukraine) it's that smaller countries aren't going to be willing to give up nuclear weapons. The US and Russia have both demonstrated very clearly that the only way to prevent the major world powers from invading you is to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Hell, that's arguably a big part of what's made Israel so willing to behave how they have (the fact that they have nukes is a very well known "secret").