Dear Mr. President,
As you begin your second term in office this week, we hope you will let the US public in on one of Washington’s best-kept open secrets: We’re not broke.
Of course, you – along with many on Capitol Hill – know full well that the dire warnings of disaster if we do not drastically cut safety net programs, enforcement of environmental protections, or job creation and training initiatives are patently false. We are a wealthy nation with the means to secure the common good for generations to come. But like a family blowing our money on luxury vehicles – such as the $610 million-per-plane F-35 – while failing to feed our children, we urgently need to reexamine our priorities.
Our federal budget should reflect the things that make us a thriving, sustainable, secure society. Instead, nearly 60 percent of the discretionary budget is now directed toward an incredibly narrow definition of security – the Pentagon budget and other military-related spending. This grossly disproportionate national “security” spending is making us deeply insecure.
In fact, many within the defense community share this viewpoint. Among others, Brig. General John Johns and Lt. General Robert Gard recently stated that, “Cutting Pentagon spending recognizes that national security is more than military power. The US is stronger with a strong economy, sustainable jobs, investment in education, renewal of our infrastructure and a sensible energy strategy. Continuing to waste money when our nation should have other priorities is bad policy and bad for security.”
Mr. President, we appreciate that you have begun to publicly question the double standards so often applied to Pentagon spending. Now the time has come for you to help the US public understand the fiscal and human toll this double standard has wrought.
The end of the 1990s is remembered fondly as an economic heyday, a time when we saw budget surpluses and a thriving economy. What is given less attention is that at that point, military spending amounted to less than half of what we spend now in inflation-adjusted dollars. We could afford to invest in job creation, a sound safety net, education programs, and other priorities that built our nation’s most fundamental security needs.
But since that time, US military spending has doubled – beginning well before the events of September 11, 2001. In fact, the Pentagon routinely struggles to spend all the money it is allocated, and ended FY12 with $100 billion in unused funding sitting in its bank accounts waiting to be spent. Yet the Pentagon remains the only part of the federal budget not subject to audit, with documented levels of waste that far outpace the entire budgets of critical human needs programs.
Let’s cut what we don’t need so that we can protect the things we do, Mr. President.
If the sequestration deal is left intact, it still will only return Pentagon spending to 2007 levels – a time when the US was at war in two countries. That is an inadequate reset in the runaway Pentagon spending we have seen, extravagant spending that has ballooned the salaries of the top five defense contractor CEOs to an average $21.5 million apiece annually while millions of children in the US aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from.
As you develop your FY14 budget, seize this moment to lead us toward real budget reforms. Let’s bring our Pentagon spending back to the pre-war levels of 2002 and make needed investments in job creation, education, healthcare, and the environment.
Mr. President, this is your year. You have all the hard-won experience of your first term under your belt, an experienced staff, and the momentum of a clear mandate from the November election. It’s time to be bold and lead this nation toward new priorities – because there is no more room in the budget for what we don’t need. What we do need is real security: good jobs and schools, affordable health care, environmental protections to keep us safe from disastrous changes in climate, accountable institutions upholding justice for all.
We’re not broke – but this nation will become increasingly broken if we don’t change our budget priorities.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy