How much is enough?
How about $439 billion. That’s how much the Pentagon wants to take out of our pockets for next year’s budget. Well, you say, they’re fighting a war. Yes, but the $439 billion doesn’t count fighting wars – those cost extra. How much extra? Well, they say they don’t know. To continue what Donnie Rumsfeld now is calling “The long war,” the Bushites just keep coming back to congress and saying: “More.”
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They’re asking for another $65 billion this year. This makes the fourth time in three years that they’ve demanded “supplemental” money to “stay the course” in Bush’s Iraq adventure. This year’s demand is on top of the $241 billion in supplemental funds they’ve already thrown into Iraq – a war costing our nation $100,000 a minute!
For what? Iraq is a mess, quickly falling into civil war, while our men and women are dying there. Here at home, our precious Bill of Rights is tattered and torn in the name of Bush’s war of lies. Meanwhile, Bush and congress are cutting back on funding for food stamps and health care for poor children, shortchanging the restoration effort on our Gulf Coast, and ignoring our country’s critical infrastructure needs – using war spending as their rationale for not doing what should be done for our own people.
How much is enough? Bush’s Pentagon budget is larger than the world’s next 18 biggest military spenders combined. Yet, it still skimps on armor, pay, and benefits for our troops! Instead, the money is going to the military contractors who’re producing hugely expensive planes, submarines, and other weapon systems that aren’t needed or don’t work – but have become massive “profit centers” for these corporations.
This is Jim Hightower saying… To tell congress that enough is enough , sign True Majority’s on-line petition. It’s easy. Go to truemajority.org.
Sources:
“”Enough is Enough,”” www.truemajority.org, February 22, 2006.
“Plan: We Win,” The New York Times, December 1, 2005.
“Jurassic Pork,” The New York Times, February 9, 2006.
“Still shortchanging the troops,” The New York Times, February 10, 2006.
“Soldiers Versus Defense Contractors,” The New York Times, December 15, 2005.
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