We Spent More On One Warship Than All the National Parks Combined - Let That Sink In

The NPS budget is so low as to be laughable, or intentional.

If national parks had lobbyists, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Instead of scraping by on a budget smaller than what the government spends on office furniture, parks would have their own bloated contracts, their own army of consultants, and a sleek PR campaign convincing Congress that keeping Yellowstone’s roads from crumbling is actually a matter of national security.

But they don’t. So here we are.

The National Park Service runs on about $3.6 billion a year-which sounds like a lot until you realize that between 2018 and 2022, the federal government spent $3.3 billion on office furniture. That’s an average of $660 million per year on desks and chairs-while national park roads fall apart, trails wash away, and rangers are laid off.

And that’s just the beginning.

While parks scrounge for scraps, Congress has no problem signing off on:

• $13 billion for a single aircraft carrier-more than four times the NPS budget

• $1.7 trillion for the F-35 fighter jet program-enough to fund national p…