Pat Hynes, Traprock Peace Center, Tax Day Rally Speakout, August 14, 2018, Greenfield
The Military Budget and the War Economy
It is an honor to speak at this rally – and a wonderful sight from where I stand to see you gathered with creative signs and messages of protest, and so much political heart and will to make change.
In the next few minutes, I would like to frame three points. The first has to do with war and militarism
1. “Diplomacy is out; airstrikes are in” – that’s the mantra in Washington. Trump and Congress have opened the floodgates pouring more money (from our taxes) into the Department of Defense (more truthfully called the Department of War) – feeding greed and starving need.
I have here a dollar, representing the federal discretionary budget for 2019 – which begins October 1. The discretionary budget is what is left for federal spending after Medicate, Medicaid and Social Security are taken into account.
Here’s the breakdown of the discretionary budget:
74 Cents of this dollar goes for all defense spending (Department of Defense, weapons, 800 military bases abroad, war on terror here, and veterans services)
This does not include the emergency fund – set aside to pay for wars, while true emergencies, like that of Puerto Rico – devastated by 2 climate-worsened hurricanes – are ignored. Meanwhile we carry trillions of dollars of debt from these wars that future generations will be burdened with.
The rest – 26 cents – must pay for all our true human security needs: Roughly
-1 penny for food and agriculture
-3 pennies for energy and environment (in midst of climate crisis)
-4 cents each for diplomacy and education (while public school teachers strike because of low salaries and underfunded schools); and
-A nickel each for low-income housing, and community and public health.
“Crumbs from the master’s table” – to quote the great poet Audre Lorde.
2. A second and related point: the depraved economic injustice of the new Tax Plan recently passed by Congress.
Under this plan, the top 1% income bracket – multi-millionaires and billionaires – get a tax break of $33,000 per year while the poor – those living on less than $25,000 per year – get a tax break of $40.
3. Finally, to speak to what we can do:
Voice our opposition to US re-entering war in Syria. (Last night Trump ordered an air attack on Syria. (If our government truly cared about the Syrian people, why have we accepted only 11 refugees this year)?
Voice our opposition to nuclear war against North Korea and war against Iran
Join the Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign for economic and racial justice: the first planning meeting happened this week-
Challenge our Democratic senators and representatives and those running for office at the state and federal levels – liberals and progressives equally with conservatives – on their position on the immoral defense budget and their position on poverty.
One in five children in this country is poor: The US has been called a “leader in child poverty.” Yet, “poverty” was mentioned only once in the 2016 primary and presidential debates.
The defense budget was never brought up in these debates. It is a sacred cow to Democrats and Republicans alike. We need a new breed of progressives in office – with many more women and people of color – who are unafraid to challenge our military superpower, which is also the largest institutional polluter in the world, both by toxic wastes and climate change emissions.
So vote in 2018 to turn our swords into plowshares and to reverse our extreme economic injustice.