Wealth & Money Quote by Barbara Boxer

Boxer’s line performs a neat political jujitsu: it opens with the required benevolence toward foreign suffering, then pivots hard into a domestic indictment. “I wish the world well” is less Hallmark sentiment than defensive armor, a way to preempt the standard charge that skepticism about intervention equals indifference. She ticks through Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan like a roll call of early-2000s U.S. entanglements, each name carrying its own baggage: war sold as liberation, humanitarian promises, state-building fantasies. The list isn’t accidental; it’s a reminder of how often “democracy” gets used as a moral coupon for policies that are messy, expensive, and politically convenient.

The key subtext sits in “Lord knows, we spend enough money there to help them.” That phrase lands like a raised eyebrow. It implies not just cost, but waste, mismanagement, and the quiet suspicion that the spending is self-perpetuating: contractors fed, strategies recycled, accountability diluted across agencies and administrations. Her tone isn’t isolationist so much as transactional in a way Washington usually pretends it isn’t.

Then comes the gut punch: “What about people at home?” It’s a rhetorical trap that forces listeners to rank obligations. Boxer frames domestic investment as “first responsibility,” recasting patriotism away from flag-waving and toward social provision. In the post-9/11 era of permanent war budgets and brittle public services, the argument isn’t that foreign lives matter less; it’s that U.S. leaders keep buying moral ambition abroad with IOUs to their own citizens.