Saturday, January 22, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Boy, do you ever have your work cut out for you now, what with the Tea Party Republican takeover of the House. First thing up, Kill Health Care Reform! Passed. Next on the agenda, Slash the Federal Budget! Still a work in progress. What they really want to slash is not Federal spending in general, just those programs that benefit the People of America. Things like education, health care, federal worker salaries, Amtrak, even the Washington subway system, all the stuff that will make life miserable for Joe Blow, the not-rich majority of us. Of course, like every Congress, Democrat or Republican, what’s off the table, non-negotiable, is the Pentagon budget, a knee-jerk nod to patriotism and misguided priorities. And yet, this is exactly the area of the federal budget that should be touched, slashed, cut, trimmed, and maybe even annihilated. For starters, let’s stop those nasty, evil, unwarranted, unwinnable and morally repugnant wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have already drained a trillion dollars from the U.S. Treasury, money down the drain and no end in sight. I read the other day where the proposed Pentagon budget for 2011, has $159 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I remember a couple years ago we were spending only (only!) $10 billion a month, but this latest figure is more than $13 billion a month. That’s a 30% increase in the cost of war. What happened? Inflation? So right there you got way more than the $100 billion a year the Tea-Partyers are screaming for. And that’s just for starters. The total Fiscal Year Pentagon budget you’re calling for – and the Repubs will approve - is $708 billion a year. $708 billion! Talk about waste, fraud and abuse! That’s some serious money, Mr. President, and none of it productive. It all goes to death and destruction and we can sure do away with that! So right there’s the heart of the beast, a way to satisfy those rabid budget-cutters, reduce the federal deficit and not do harm to the rest of us. In fact, this would actually do some good for the world. Cut the Pentagon budget by just 20% and there you have another $140 billion budget reduction without touching a single social program or service, and even a few billion left over to fix some of our crumbling roads and bridges, maybe even bail out a few states in deep financial trouble, like my own here in California. Just a suggestion, Mr. President. I’m no economist or accountant but it sure makes sense to me.