Budgets

The Trillion Dollar Budget For War

July 27, 2017 William D. Hartung, www.tomdispatch.com Educate! Budgets, National Security, Wars and Militarism

By William D. Hartung for Tom Dispatch - You wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon. Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted for inflation, that means it’s higher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak. And yet that’s barely half the story. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in “defense” spending that aren’t even counted in the Pentagon budget. Under the circumstances, laying all this out in grisly detail -- and believe me, when you dive into the figures, they couldn’t be grislier -- is the only way to offer a better sense of the true costs of our wars past, present, and future, and of the funding that is the lifeblood of the national security state. When you do that, you end up with no less than 10 categories of national security spending (only one of which is the Pentagon budget). So steel yourself for a tour of our nation’s trillion-dollar-plus “national security” budget. Given the Pentagon’s penchant for wasting money and our government’s record of engaging in dangerously misguided wars without end...

Building A Mass Movement To Stop Mass Killing

July 20, 2017 Medea Benjamin, www.alternet.org Strategize! Budgets, Mass Movement, Social Movements, US military, Wars and Militarism

By Medea Benjamin for AlterNet - The $600 billion annual cost of the US military budget eats up 54% of all federal discretionary funds. It’s no wonder we don’t have money to address the crisis of global warming, build effective public transportation systems, institute a Medicare-for-All health system, or provide the free college education that all our youth deserve. You would think it would be easy to form a united front with activists from different movements who want to redirect our tax dollars. Students ﬁghting for free education should understand that stopping just one weapons system, the expensive and unnecessary Lockheed Martin F-35 ﬁghter jets, would fund the education of all college students for the next two decades. Nurses ﬁghting for universal health care should understand that if we cut the bloated military budget, we’d have plenty of money for a national health- care system like the Europeans have. Environmentalists paddling their kayaks to block oil-digging ships should understand that if we dramatically cut our military spending, we’d have hun- dreds of billions of dollars to propel us into the era of green, sustainable energy. Unions should recognize that the military is one of the worst creators of jobs in relation to money spent. It was easier to connect with other movements when the peace movement was strong while trying to stop George W. Bush’s Iraq war.

1,500 Groups Urge Budget That Invests Health, Jobs & Future

July 12, 2017 Staff, www.chn.org Resist! Budgets, Coalition, health, Jobs

By Staff of CHN - As Congress begins its work on the FY 2018 budget, we are writing to urge you to ensure that funding is adequate to meet the needs of all people and communities. The undersigned are organizations from across the nation representing millions of Americans, including faith groups, human service providers, labor and civil rights organizations, and advocates and policy experts concerned with improving our nation’s health, protecting our environment, supporting families, reducing poverty and hunger, strengthening our communities, and investing in economic growth and prosperity for all our people. Our message to you is clear: there is no way to keep the promise of prosperity for all Americans, including families with children, women, seniors, people with disabilities, communities of color, and others who are being left behind in the 21st century economy, without significantly increasing investments in public education, affordable housing, health and nutrition, public transit, roads and bridges, clean air, clean water...

U.S. Conference Of Mayors Opposes Military-Heavy Trump Budget

June 27, 2017 Staff, www.worldbeyondwar.org Resist! Budgets, Trump Administration, US military

By Staff of World Beyond War - “We are very excited that the entire US Conference of Mayors, from major metropoles such as New York City and Los Angeles to small rural townships, understand that the resources being sucked up by the Pentagon to wage endless wars overseas should be used to address our crumbling infrastructure, the climate crisis and poverty at home and abroad. Congress and the Trump administration should listen to these mayors, as they reflect the needs and hopes of their constituents, not the greed of corporate donors,” said Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK. “The Peace Council applauds the resolve of major city mayors to dramatically cut the U.S. military budget and to take the funds saved to provide money for jobs, education, housing, transportation, seniors, youth, rebuild our roads, bridges, public transportation much more,” said Henry Lowendorf of the US Peace Council. “

How Compassion Becomes Contempt

May 30, 2017 Sam Pizzigati, www.inequality.org Educate! Budgets, Trump Administration

By Sam Pizzigati for Inequality.org - The assembled scribes, noting the hundreds of billions in cuts for the poor and the vulnerable in the new budget plan, wanted to know if Mulvaney considered his budget compassionate. Mulvaney promptly set about defining “compassion” — in his own terms. We have too many people out there, he told reporters, “who don’t want to work.” “We don’t have enough money,” he then added, “to take care of people who don’t need help.” “We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs,” Mulvaney rolled on, “but by the number of people we help get off of those programs.” And getting folks off “those programs,” the budget chief insisted, would be an act of true compassion. “That,” insisted the White House budget chief, “is how you can help people take charge of their own lives again.” No, countered Massachusetts congressman Jim McGovern, that would be “a lousy and rotten thing to do to poor people.”

Participatory Budgeting Is Gaining Momentum In US. How Does It Work?

March 27, 2017 Kristine Wong, Create! Budgets, Participatory budgeting

By Kristine Wong for Truth Out - It's tax season in the US. With the deadline looming to pay Uncle Sam less than a month away, many are wondering -- or grumbling -- about how their tax dollars are allocated in the first place. But now participatory budgeting, a concept in which citizens get to vote democratically on how a particular pot of public funds will be spent, has been gaining traction across the US over the last few years, and promising to give citizens a voice in these matters. The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 that aims to "deepen democracy, build stronger communities and make public budgets more equitable and effective," is one of the most visible groups working with cities

Trump Budget Horrifies Majority Of Voters, Poll Finds

March 27, 2017 Nika Knight, www.commondreams.org Educate! Budgets, Donald Trump, Trump Administration

By Nika Knight for Common Dreams - Most Americans don't want Elmo to get fired. They also don't want enormous funding cuts to medical research, after-school and summer programs, new road and transit projects, climate change research, and a program to help low income people heat their homes. Those cuts—and many more—comprise the "morally obscene" budget put together by the Trump administration, and a new Quinnipiac poll published Friday demonstrates that those proposals are deeply unpopular with most Americans. The numbers showing widespread disapproval of President Donald Trump's budget are out just as public figures call for a "total shutdown" of government over the president's alleged ties...

The Big Lie Behind Trump’s Education Budget

March 24, 2017 Jeff Bryant, www.educationopportunitynetwork.org Educate! Budgets, Education, Trump Administration

By Jeff Bryant for Education Opportunity Network - Public school supporters are angry at President Trump’s budget proposal, which plans to cut funding to the Department of Education by 13 percent – taking that department’s outlay down to the level it was ten years ago. But the target for their anger should not be just the extent of the cuts but also how the cuts are being pitched to the public. Trump’s education budget cuts are aimed principally at federal programs that serve poor kids, especially their access to afterschool programs and high-quality teachers. At the same time, Trump’s spending blueprint calls for pouring $1.4 billion into school choice policies including a $168 million increase for charter schools...

Trump’s Budget Slashes Funding For Public Schools

March 18, 2017 Carol Burris, www.networkforpubliceducation.org Educate! Budgets, Donald Trump, Education, Privatization, Public Education

By Carol Burris for The Network for Public Good - Donald Trump’s education budget is a declaration of war on public education and our nation’s neediest children. It was surely designed by Betsy DeVos. Trump’s budget would axe after-school programs known as the 21st Century Community Learning Centers which help school districts, churches and nonprofit groups serve more than 1.6 million American children, most of whom are poor. In defending the cuts to such programs, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said after-school programs don’t “show results.” He went on to say that feeding children after-school has never been proven to get them better jobs, so we cannot afford to do it anymore

Teachers, Parents And Students Hold Coloring Contest To Expose Crime

January 25, 2016 Carolyn Leith, www.livingindialogue.com Resist! Art, Budgets, Charter Schools, Education, Privatization

By Carolyn Leith for Living in Dialogue - Back in September, parents were blindsided when Seattle Public Schools (SPS) proposed staff cuts at “25 or something” schools across the district. Emergency meetings were held, letters were sent to the school board, but none of these efforts seemed to make a difference. The district had made up its mind. This is when Shawna Murphy and I decided to create our own advocacy group called Teacher Retention Advocate Parents or TRAP. We staged a spoofy bake sale – dubbed the Half-Baked Bake Sale – at district headquarters.

Worker-Owners Cheer Creation Of Co-op Development Fund

July 7, 2014 Rebecca Burns, www.inthesetimes.com Create! Budgets, Cooperatives, New York City (NYC)

In a victory for new economy advocates, the New York City Council passed a budget last week that will create a $1.2 million fund for the growth of worker-owned cooperative businesses. The investment is the largest a municipal government in the U.S. has ever made in the sector, breaking new ground for the cooperative development movement. Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Democracy at Work Institute, hails the New York City Council’s move as “historic.” “We have seen bits and pieces here and there, but New York City is the first place to make an investment at that level,” she says. New York’s cooperative development fund was the brainchild of a coalition of community groups—including the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, the New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives, the Democracy at Work Institute, Make the Road New York and others—that came together to stage a series of public forums and advocacy days to secure widespread support for the initiative on the City Council. Over the next year, the fund will provide financial and technical assistance in the planned launch of 28 new cooperatives and the continued growth of 20 existing cooperatives, supporting the creation of 234 jobs in total.

What Happens When Youth Make Budget Decisions?

June 27, 2014 Hollie Russon Gilman, www.nextcity.org Create! Boston, Budgets, Education, Elections, Youth

Many young people in Boston just voted for their first time, and the results are in. The city’s “Youth Lead the Change” project, with help from the Participatory Budgeting Project, was the first youth-led participatory budgeting process in a U.S. city. The project empowered young people, ages 12 to 25, to decide where $1 million of public capital should go to best improve their communities. This is real money and real decision-making power. Boston’s young people have been engaged at every step, from designing the process to working directly with city officials to make viable project proposals. City agencies donated time to work directly with young people — often during pizza-filled, late-night events — to discuss spending priorities and current projects. Voting was open from June 14th to June 20th, and young Boston residents were able to vote for four out of 14 projects in four categories: education, community culture, parks/environment/health, and streets and safety. Projects included improving community centers, creating art spaces, and renovating parks. Voting sites were in community centers, schools and T stops throughout the city.

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