Along with Friends Luanne McDonald, Michael Zager and Bill Upholt (shown in the photo below), I had a very productive and satisfying Friday morning lobbying much of the Connecticut Congressional delegation regarding the need for the U.S. government to drastically cut military spending over the next decade. Our message was clear. The grossly bloated military budget is the place to find much of the budget relief necessary for addressing the current fiscal crisis. We can cut one trillion dollars over the next decade without sacrificing U.S. military superiority.
In particular, we were pleased to have quality time with Senator Elect Christopher Murphy and Representative Elect Elizabeth Esty, and a brief visit with Representative John Larson. We also had a very good visit with Ethan Saxon, Senator Richard Blumenthal's Legislative Assistant for defense issues. Connecticut is represented by a strong, reasonable group of legislators. We are counting on their leadership on this important issue, in particular the elimination of waste and fraud.
"We are spending too much on the Pentagon and not meeting the needs of our communities and our world. Please cut one trillion dollars from the Pentagon budget."
This is "the ask" that a ballroom full of 300 Quakers, currently attending a Public Policy Institute sponsored by Friends Committee for National Legislation, will take to their legislators on Capital Hill in Washington D.C. on Friday, November 16th. Several of us from Connecticut are planning on meeting with Rep. John Larson and staffers working for other members of the Connecticut delegation on the need to cut military spending, while investing in sustainable energy technology that will create new jobs.
We must cut our dependence on militarism as a fundamental driver of the US economy.
"Hmmmm. How many of these can I buy with an unlimited budget?"
Barack Obama is moving far too slowly on converting military spending into other, more productive, uses. But Mitt Romney plans to rush in the other direction; spending even more tax money on the military, while drastically cutting funding on vital domestic programs. This is shear lunacy.
Fortunately for all of us, Ralph Nader never gives up on developing innovative approaches to making the government more responsible to the American people. His latest idea, developed in his book Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism, is to develop a nation-wide network of volunteers willing to commit $100 a year and 100 hours of volunteer work dedicated to keeping pressure on their congressmen regarding ending corporate excesses and crime. (Of course, the military budget fuels many of the biggest examples of each.)
You can join the effort at several levels, not having to pay your money and donate your hours until:
999 other Americans sign the same pledge (the pioneers)9,999 other Americans sign the same pledge (the founders)99,999 other Americans sign the same pledge (the drivers)999,999 other Americans sign the same pledge (the critical massers)
I've signed up as a pioneer. You, too, can purchase Nader's book and sign the pledge, at the level of your choice, by clicking on: http://csrl.org/
I have a complicated relationship with the defense industry in my home state of Connecticut.Currently, Connecticut ranks 5th among all states in defense contract expenditures.I know that building the tools of war and selling them to the government is what feeds and clothes many of Connecticut’s workers. But in the long term, this unimaginative industry has serious consequences for Connecticut, the U.S., and all people. Having worked as a lobbyist for a year now, both on the state level in Connecticut and on the national level in DC, I know the immediate pressure lawmakers feel to protect the specific people and businesses they’ve been elected to represent.It would be hard to find a politician who really loves that the U.S. spent (or borrowed) $100 billion on the war in Afghanistan in 2011. But it’s easy to find one who is pleased that defense contractors in his district are profiting from war.
The issue of drones exemplifies this contradiction between what some legislators see as a business opportunity and what others see as a destructive step towards an institutionally militarized foreign policy, not to mention a complete reshaping of the popular conception of morality in warfare. There is a congressional caucus dedicated solely to encouraging the use and development of drones. The U.S. House Unmanned Systems Caucus is a congressional caucus whose goal is to “educate members of Congress and the public on the strategic, tactical, and scientific value of unmanned systems; actively support further development and acquisition of more systems, and to more effectively engage the civilian aviation community on unmanned system use and safety.” Meanwhile, the ongoing use of surveillance drones in Iraq by the U.S. State Department has angered Iraqis and been perceived as an “affront to Iraqi sovereignty.” The heavily-reported downed U.S. drone in Iran has been so meaningful for Iranians that one Iranian business reportedly makes 2,000 replicas of the drone per day to meet consumer demand.Whether they are armed or not, drones tend to instill fear and resentment where they are used. Much can be said about drones, but suffice it to say that the foreign policy implications of our increased use of drones ought to be weighed with grave concern, rather than viewed as an opportunity to please a defense contractor in one’s district.
When we vote for someone to represent us in Washington, we do so with the hope that they will keep our interests in mind, but also that they will use the stores of information available to them to act as responsibly as possible on a national and global scale.For me, that means prioritizing global and national stability over local industry. After all, without peace, industry is irrelevant.
How can those of us working for Connecticut’s defense contractors support ourselves financially while also urging our lawmakers to legislate for peace, rather than merely look for opportunities to create more defense jobs?(As my FCNL colleague Patrick Lozada recently pointed out, Einstein is quoted as saying “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”)
Conceived during the Carter administration and signed into existence by Ronald Reagan in 1984, the United States Institute is one of our nation's finest investments of taxpayer dollars. Below are some excerpts from the Institute's website. You can click on the items in blue to get more information, or go visit the entire yourself at: http://www.usip.org/
Who We Are ?
USIP is our country's global conflict management center. Created by Congress to be independent and nonpartisan, we work to prevent, mitigate and resolve international conflict without resorting to violence.
Of course in this new period of budget austerity, the USIP is endangered. As reported in Wikipedia, the case for the Institute was eloquently made by former U.S. Central Command Commander Anthony Zinni who wrote an op-ed, published in The New York Times March 7, 2011, in support of USIP. "Congress would be hard-pressed to find an agency that does more with less. The institute’s entire budget would not pay for the Afghan war for three hours, is less than the cost of a fighter plane, and wouldn’t sustain even 40 American troops in Afghanistan for a year. Within the budget, peace-building is financed as part of national security programs, and is recognized as an important adjunct to conventional defense spending and diplomacy. The institute’s share of the proposed international affairs budget, $43 million, is minuscule: less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the State Department’s budget, and one-hundredth of 1 percent of the Pentagon’s."
Zinni wrote after the House of Representatives had voted in February 2011to zero out USIP's budget for the fiscal year. Subsequently funds were restored, but at a total of $39.5, a 20 percent reduction from the fiscal year 2010 level of $49.2 million. (For more details see:http://www.usip.org/publications/statement-usip-budget.
Friends, the United States Institute of Peace should be receiving more funding, not less. As military budgets are finally beginning to be cut, we must invest in peaceful approaches to increasing our security. The USIP is a brilliant initiative worthy of your full support as you lobby your congressional representatives regarding spending priorities.
He's not running, but Representative Jim McGovern from Massachusetts' Third Congressional District espouses many of the positions that I would like to see in a candidate.
Last night I heard McGovern as he accepted the Edward F. Snyder Award for National Legislative Leadership in Advancing Disarmament and Building Peace, given by Fiends Committee for National Legislation. The guy was great; grounded in common sense, humble and funny. More importantly, on issue after issue he recognized how the U.S. must reorient it's spending priorities to build social capital at home.
