ACTION ALERT: Liberate the Pentagon Budget
Win Without War
(February 3 2021) — Last month, the US passed a devastating milestone: the total number of lives lost to COVID-19 surged past 420,000, more than all the Americans killed in World War II.
Military comparisons are overwrought, but this one matters because Congress has spent an eye-popping $6.4 trillion of our taxpayer dollars on weapons and wars since September 11, 2001. And despite the “official” justifications behind that massive level of spending, the reality is that money is simply feeding the war machine — not keeping us safer.
Right now we have a huge opportunity to change that: the Biden administration is beginning to put together its defense budget request for next year and key allies in Congress say now is the time to ramp up the public pressure.
Just 10% of funds from the bloated Pentagon budget would be a game-changer for public healthcare, climate change, and education. A measly 10% cut from the three-quarters of a TRILLION dollar budget is really not even that dramatic — it would only return Pentagon spending to around the same level as when Trump took office!
That’s how out of whack the situation is. Even now, the same Senators who are refusing to support a new COVID relief bill because it’s ‘too much money’ had no problem approving the bloated Pentagon budget less than a month ago.
Billionaire arms dealers and their lobbyists are convincing politicians to take our taxpayer money for food, healthcare, and pandemic preparedness away and instead give it to war.
We say no more.
Budgets are moral documents and can save lives. They reveal our values and determine our priorities. The pandemic has brought to the surface injustices that have long needed correcting, and now is the time to do just that:
Rebuilding our futures lies in what we support and resource right now.
Let’s do everything we can to make sure we build the world we desperately need and want: a just, equitable, and peaceful world, for all.
Tell Congress to Cut the Pentagon Budget
People around the country have had to readjust their budgets in light of the pandemic and it’s time for the Pentagon to do the same. Now that we’ve passed the grim milestone of losing more people in the United States to the COVID-19 pandemic than we did in WWII – it’s clear that the biggest security challenges of our time from pandemics to climate change don’t have military solutions.
We need to bring our security thinking into the twenty-first century, cut the pentagon budget, and reinvest those resources into strategies that genuinely make us all safer.
Thank you for working for peace,
Amy, Kate, Amisha, and the Win Without War team
