Where’s the Billionaire Bailout for Our Children?

In a stark reflection of misplaced national priorities, we witness the government’s ability to swiftly allocate funds for the military and federal law enforcement—even by diverting money from shipbuilding funds under the Trump administration—while a court order to feed millions of starving children is met with legalistic inertia. The official response? “Our Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available, and now two Courts have issued conflicting opinions on what we can and cannot do.” The bureaucracy of compassion is a grotesque irony.

Where is the billionaire who will bail out the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) like Timothy Mellon bailed out the military?

The Rise of Mutual Aid: Libertarian Utopia or Societal Failure?

In the vacuum created by government inaction, it is private businesses and community members who are stepping up. I see local restaurants offering discounts, free meals, and launching GoFundMe campaigns to ensure community children don’t go hungry. This grassroots movement is the very definition of mutual aid, a powerful wave of collective support that crested during the pandemic.

Frankly, this is the world I imagine some libertarians have long advocated for: minimal government intervention, maximum reliance on private capital and voluntary charity. Yet, as inspiring as these acts of generosity are, they signal a deeper, more dangerous trend—a slippery slope away from a foundational social contract.

We are quickly moving toward a system where fundamental rights, like the right to food, become dependent on the benevolence of the wealthy and the discounts of small business owners. Is the next step to privatize federal law enforcement and the military? If profit, not public duty, becomes the driving force, would the loudest anti-government voices suddenly cease to be anti-war? The notion that a private business’s “boot” is somehow lighter than a government’s is a cold comfort to those depending on the unpredictable kindness of strangers.

The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: “If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!”

—Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England: The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Proletariat

Looking to Wisconsin’s Richest for the Checkbook

Don’t lecture me on inaction; I’ve donated. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal hiding behind this harsh exterior. Kids and animals still get me every time, but I simply cannot afford to feed them all.

This brings me to our state’s own billionaire, Diane Hendricks. As the wealthiest “self-made” woman in America and a massive political donor to conservative, anti-tax causes, she holds immense power and influence. Given her strong alignment with the political wing that advocates for less government spending on social programs, it’s fair to wonder: Will she step into the breach that her preferred policies have, in part, created?

Her philanthropic focus is often on local initiatives in Beloit and education, but the national hunger crisis is a direct result of political paralysis. The question isn’t whether she can afford to help—with a net worth in the tens of billions, she could bail out the entire SNAP shortfall and barely notice. The question is whether she will choose to demonstrate that private capital can genuinely solve the humanitarian crises that her political allies argue the government should not fund.

We are watching to see where the priorities of the ultra-wealthy truly lie when children’s lives are on the line.