April
4, 2023
Greenfield,
Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – April, the month tax filings are due,
prompts us to ponder what our income taxes pay for. Are they used to provide all citizens
sufficient resources and public goods for human security and well-being – the
core of our national security?
How
much of our taxes pay for radically reducing climate change emissions and
protection of nature; for equal quality education for all; for providing health
care for all; for housing the poor and homeless and eliminating hunger; for
safe bridges, roads and rail and adequate public transportation; for
prioritizing diplomacy and peace in the world so as to avert war and reverse
our decline of democracy? Aren’t these
our deepest security guarantees?
Reviewing
the federal discretionary budget for the year 2022, here is a snapshot of our
government’s values:
For
every $100 spent on the Pentagon, for war, weapons, counterterrorism, military
personnel, and nearly 800 military bases in 80 countries on six continents, an
estimated
$2
is spent on Food and Agriculture;
$6
is spent on Transportation;
$6
is spent on International Affairs, a fraction of which includes Diplomacy;
$8
is spent on Energy and Environment;
$10
is spent on Health;
$14
is spent on Education;
$14
is spent on Housing and Community.
Would
you call this budget moral?
Consider
these facts.
In
March of this year, nearly 30 million poor people had their food assistance
benefits severely reduced, while inflationary food prices have grown by 10%.
Fifty-two
percent of children under the age of 18 in the U.S. today are poor or
low-income; and the majority of our country’s poor are women and children.
Between
40 and 50% of people report having difficulty paying for a $400 medical
emergency expense; 8% have no health insurance
Adult
literacy in the U.S., at 79%, falls below many countries, including Cuba and
Azerbaijan, each near 100% literacy.
Among the 78 nations that measure 15-year-old students’ academic
performance in math, reading and science, the most recent 2018 PISA results
show that the United States ranks lower than many countries.
America’s wars on drugs, crime,
terrorism and “illegal” immigrants – along with our decades-long military
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan – have created a weapons-saturated politics
of policing, border control and mass incarceration. To date, the US has spent over $1.6 billion
on the militarization of police with hand-me-down military-grade weapons, vehicles, and equipment. Research “suggests that officers with
military hardware and mindsets will resort to violence more quickly and often.”
The climate crisis has receded to a
low-priority, almost nonexistent background since the war in Ukraine, while
this war and the reconstruction of Ukraine post-war add immense fuel emissions
to an already deeply endangered world: a world that climate scientists see as
hurtling toward catastrophe. War is a
climate killer, and the Pentagon is the largest institutional climate criminal
in the world.
Regarding diplomacy as a priority
to avert war, US and Russian officials met on March 2, 2023 for the first time
since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, for less than 10
minutes. During this same period, the
U.S. has given some $47 billion in military aid to Ukraine. With its scrawny and starved diplomacy, our
government has no interest in negotiating an end to the brutal war in Ukraine,
stating openly it wants to “weaken Russia.” Simultaneously, the U.S. threatens
war against China, threats that began a few years ago against our largest
economic competitor and have only grown and militarized. As millions of people are increasingly
traumatized from intensifying climate emergencies, our government has insanely
enlisted alliances with NATO, Japan, South Korea and Australia to prepare for
war against China.
No one benefits more from wars
than salivating arms dealers who have shrewdly located facilities in every
state and not surprisingly won inflation relief in 2022 from Congress.
How
our government coddles its arms dealers, which account for a record 40% of the world’s
weapons exports in the years 2018-22!
The State Department negotiates these weapons sales to more than 100
countries, while sparing only 10 minutes to meet with Russia over the war in
Ukraine. No surprise that our
hyper-militarized government ranks 129th out of 163 countries in the 2022
Global Peace Index,
Maybe, just maybe, had we a
parallel Department of Peace, empowered and funded equally with the original
Department of War–as a signer of the Declaration of Independence proposed–we
might have halved the 392 military interventions engaged in since 1776 and
excelled in diplomacy and peace negotiations as much as we do in waging
war. “Peace, not war, is the norm of
human life,” proclaims the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement. Why cannot our federal government and its
budget internalize this wisdom?
About the Author
H. Patricia Hynes is a retired professor of environmental health, directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts. She has written and edited 7 books, among them The Recurring Silent Spring. and Justice. Haley Publishing, Athol, MA, is publishing her new book, Hope but Demand Justice. She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, environment, and public health.
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