["The country is sprinting towards a trillion-dollar budget for
weapons and war," the groups wrote in a new letter. "We cannot
continue down this morally bankrupt path."]
[[link removed]]

60+ FAITH GROUPS URGE CONGRESS TO ‘DRAMATICALLY’ SLASH PENTAGON
BUDGET  
[[link removed]]


 

Jake Johnson
March 14, 2023
Common Dreams
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ "The country is sprinting towards a trillion-dollar budget for
weapons and war," the groups wrote in a new letter. "We cannot
continue down this morally bankrupt path." _

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley arrives at a
news briefing at the Pentagon on May 23, 2022 in Arlington, Virginia.,
Alex Wong/Getty Images

 

More than 60 faith-based organizations on Tuesday urged the U.S.
Congress to impose major cuts on the bloated military budget as
President Joe Biden pushes for a nearly $30 billion increase and
Republicans demand even bigger spending hike.
"The country is sprinting towards a trillion-dollar budget for weapons
and war—propping up an expensive and harmful militarized foreign
policy while people struggle to meet their basic needs," reads a new
letter
[[link removed]]
to members of Congress signed by U.S., international, and state and
local groups including the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice, Hindus for Human Rights,
and dozens of others.

"We cannot continue down this morally bankrupt path," the letter
continues. "We urge members of Congress to dramatically cut
militarized spending in the fiscal year 2024 budget—both to
facilitate reinvestment in the well-being of our communities, and to
curtail the harms of our militarized foreign policy."

The groups' principled stand against devoting further resources to the
U.S. military—and specifically to the Pentagon, an agency that
recently failed its fifth consecutive audit
[[link removed]]—comes
days after Biden requested
[[link removed]] an
$886 billion military budget for the upcoming fiscal year, with $842
billion of that total earmarked for the Department of Defense.

Tori Bateman, the policy advocacy coordinator at AFSC, said Tuesday
that "we know that there is enormous waste, fraud, and abuse at the
Pentagon—and that spending exorbitant amounts of money on weapons
and war takes away from the funding our communities receive for things
like healthcare and housing."

"This year, we need Congress to commit to cutting Pentagon spending,
and maintaining a robust level of spending on human needs programs,"
Bateman added.
"We need Congress to commit to cutting Pentagon spending, and
maintaining a robust level of spending on human needs programs."

But that demand is likely to be ignored in a Congress that agrees each
year—on a bipartisan basis and with relatively little pushback
[[link removed]]—to
increase the U.S. military budget, often by tens of billions
[[link removed]]
more than the president's original request. In 2022, just 78 members
of the House [[link removed]] voted for Rep.
Barbara Lee's (D-Calif.) amendment to cut the military budget by $100
billion while 350 opposed it.

In response to Biden's budget framework, leading Republicans made
clear that they would push for even more military spending, calling
the president's proposal "woefully inadequate
[[link removed]]"—even
though it's among the largest in U.S. history
[[link removed]].

"If past experience is any guide, more than half
[[link removed]]
of the new Pentagon budget will go to contractors, with the biggest
share going to the top five—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon,
General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman—to build everything from
howitzers and tanks to intercontinental ballistic missiles," William
Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft noted
[[link removed]]
last week. "Much of the funding for contractors will come from
spending on buying, researching, and developing weapons, which
accounts for $315 billion
[[link removed]]
of the new budget request."

Of the $1.7 trillion in discretionary spending that Biden has proposed
for fiscal year 2024, just $584 billion is reserved for social
programs, analyst Stephen Semler observed
[[link removed]].

The anti-war group CodePink said in a statement Tuesday that while
"President Biden's overall 2024 budget does have some positive
proposals like restoring the child tax credit, investing in clean
energy projects, and cleaning up nuclear waste sites," the "likelihood
of passing the tax reform needed as well as the policies themselves
seems very unlikely as congressional Democrats couldn't even pass the
Build Back Better legislation when they had more control in 2021."

"What will pass—what always passes no matter who is in the White
House and what majority fills the halls of Congress—is the defense
budget," the group added. "Any domestic policy being dangled to the
public by the Democrats is meaningless while they still support the
ever-growing and immoral defense budget."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.

 

 
Jake Johnson [[link removed]]

Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
 

* Faith Groups; Military Budget; Peace Groups;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]