{"id":972,"date":"2013-02-11T10:44:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T16:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=972"},"modified":"2013-02-11T10:44:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T16:44:41","slug":"cut-pentagon-waste-and-preserve-domestic-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/cut-pentagon-waste-and-preserve-domestic-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Cut Pentagon waste and preserve domestic programs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Jasmin Maurer, PEP Executive Director<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/news\/opinion\/mailbag\/letters-to-the-editor\/cut-pentagon-waste-and-preserve-domestic-programs\/article_65ad0e3f-bf30-5a69-81a8-1763a924b846.html\">published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Congress put up roadblocks and diverted us away from the fiscal cliff, but the rerouted course isn&#8217;t safe yet. Sequestration still looms on the horizon unless Congress can reach an alternative (&#8220;Lawmakers go separate ways to find deal,&#8221; Feb. 5). On the discretionary spending chopping block are domestic programs and the Pentagon budget.<\/p>\n<p>This fight has been going on for a while, but it&#8217;s still critically important. Cuts will need to be made, and it&#8217;s about time we addressed a rather large elephant that&#8217;s been in the room.<\/p>\n<p>Our over-bloated Pentagon budget has grown 42 percent since 2000, not including spending for wars. It funds a number of programs that military experts point out are outdated and unnecessary. It also bankrolls the salaries of defense contracting CEOs, the top five of which amounted to $21.5 million last year.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, domestic programs have already taken hits. Low-income energy assistance has seen cuts of 32 percent and faces even more through sequestration. A balanced budget cannot come at the expense of our most-vulnerable neighbors: the 12 million unemployed, the one in three young people who are underemployed, or the one in four children who live in poverty.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s plenty of waste at the Pentagon. Let&#8217;s take the magnifying glass and focus there, weeding out the obsolete and excess that is not needed. Let&#8217;s not take this out on our neighbors here at home who deserve the security that domestic programs provide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Jasmin Maurer, PEP Executive Director published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch Congress put up roadblocks and diverted us away from the fiscal cliff, but the rerouted course isn&#8217;t safe yet. Sequestration still looms on the horizon unless Congress can reach an alternative (&#8220;Lawmakers go separate ways to find deal,&#8221; Feb. 5). On the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[166],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-defense-budget"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}