Every year, PEP hand delivers an appeal to Congress to reduce military spending and reinvest in human needs. This year’s appeal focuses on a number of areas where we feel cuts can be made. Please sign on to show your support, and this summer we will deliver this appeal along with your signature of support to your Senators and House Rep.
Save our Nation
Reduce Military Spending
Dear <<We will enter your congresspersons’ names here>>,
We are concerned citizens who believe that the United States must further reduce the amount that it devotes to the Pentagon. Like citizens in other communities across America we recognize that the end of shooting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will not remove all US obligations in what remains a very dangerous world. Working closely with other nations in the international community, the US should do its part to address those dangers.
However, it is clear to us that:
- The chances for a major ground war in the near future are very small. Large countries like China need us as customers. Smaller rogue nations like North Korea or Iran are surrounded by equally or more powerful countries. They know that very aggressive behavior on their part could threaten their own regimes.
- The United States was a world super-power in the late 1990s when its military budget was almost half its current level. A trillion dollar cut to our Pentagon over the next ten years would still leave us far stronger than any country in the world, and would reduce the pressure on other countries to try to compete with us.
- The United States has been running an unsustainable annual federal budget deficit resulting in tremendous growth in the national debt.
- The United States faces a huge increase in elderly people in the coming years, most of whom will depend upon Social Security and Medicare for their basic needs.
- The United States is not currently meeting its infrastructure, research, educational, and poverty reduction needs. Additional resources allocated to these and related domestic programs will be central to our future.
In sum, we believe that the United States can only address its fiscal deficit, its growing elderly population, its safety net requirements, and its domestic investment obligations by substantially reducing our military budget. The Pentagon cuts have begun. They can and must continue responsibly.
As the Peace Economy Project has stated in the past, we don’t need a new fleet of 10 air craft carriers, expected to cost $120 billion dollars. We don’t need the F-35 next generation fighter plane that will cost $325 billion dollars. The same is true for replacement nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, a new bomber, and many other high tech weapon and communications systems. We don’t need 737 military bases around the world, and we don’t need large deployments of US forces in Germany, Japan, England, and 65 other countries.
We urge you to give Secretary of Defense Hagel and President Obama support as they carry out the Defense Sequester. The Sequester reductions are necessary, but the Administration must be given the latitude to make the cuts in a way that protects our nation, allows international cooperation, and minimizes the financial pain to soldiers and Department of Defense civilians alike.
Help us get this message to Capitol Hill by making a donation to PEP, and sign your name on to make our voices heard, Pentagon waste must be cut to fund our human needs.
