Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans For Peace

VT Digger Editor’s note: This commentary is by Andrew Schoerke, a longtime peace and justice advocate who is a member of the Will Miller Green Mountain Chapter of Veterans For Peace and a trustee of the Greater Bennington Peace and Justice Center. He is a retired captain of the U.S. Navy Reserve and lives in Shaftsbury.

 

On Jan. 14 Congress passed an Omnibus Spending Bill, which will provide $1.1 trillion of discretionary spending, money that is not mandated for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to keep the federal government operating for the balance of the 2014 fiscal year. The passage of the bill was remarkable for two reasons: first because it will avoid another disastrous government shutdown and second, because it combined 12 separate spending bills which had been blocked by House Republican opposition since last July. Overall, the bill provides $491.7 billion for domestic programs while $520.5 billion is directed for military spending plus an additional $85.2 billion to pay for the 12-year-old war in Afghanistan.

 

Regrettably, in order to pass the Omnibus Spending Bill, many human rights programs have been cut or not included. One spending bill that was cut was the Farm Bill which includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) commonly known as “food stamps,” a program that has seen a nearly 100 percent increase over the last five years. Although a new Farm Bill is currently in congressional hearings at this writing, there is little hope that the food stamp program will regain the full $9 billion cut over 10 years that were part of the Omnibus Spending Bill. The impact will be traumatic on the over 850,000 households that will be affected.

 

Another cut made by congressional lawmakers were the pensions earned by retired servicemen and servicewomen. Working-age military retirees took a hit with the budget deal President Obama signed last month, as the legislation reduced their cost-of-living allowances by 1 percent starting in December 2015 — a higher rate would apply once those individuals reach age 62.

 

Incredibly, a program that many low-wage earners depend on for basic subsistence was not even included in the omnibus bill as Congress failed to hike the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour by 2016. President Obama, however, using executive authority, is expected to increase the minimum wage of federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour but it will apply only to new federal contract workers, giving contractors time to adjust and price their bids. The workers who will be affected by this increase include janitors and construction workers working on federal sites as well as military bases.

 

Arguably, the most glaring injustice of the Omnibus Spending Bill was how Congress turned its back on the long-term unemployed. By refusing to extend emergency Unemployment Insurance (UI), a fund that people pay into their entire working lives, 1,300,000 unemployed Americans will lose their benefits beginning this month. The number could climb to 3.6 million by the end of the year. Although the number of workers directly affected is staggering, the ripple effect throughout the economy will be enormous. Consider: $400 million that state economies will lose each week; an estimated 240,000 job losses due to reduced consumer demand. Unemployment insurance doesn’t just help job seekers; it also supports their children as evidenced by the approximately 600,000 children who were kept out of poverty in 2012 because their families received UI (source: chief economist of Moody’s Analytics).

 

As noted above, the military spending contained in the omnibus bill accounts for over 53 percent of the federal discretionary budget and includes money to build 29 F-35 fighter aircraft at a pro-rated cost of $230 million each plus procurement of long-lead time components for another 39. Also included is an additional $5.9 billion to complete the construction of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier for a total estimated cost of $17.5 billion, as well as an additional $19 billion to modernize the National Nuclear Administration’s weapons program including stockpile, infrastructure and research through 2031. Not included was funding for the Uranium Processing Facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn., which is estimated to require an additional $6 billion to complete.

 

Although the passage of the Omnibus Spending Bill was seen by many as nothing less than miraculous, what was not surprising was Congress’ continued support for our perpetual state of war. Their largesse to the military can only be viewed as making war on the poor.