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Our Budget Priorities Should Reflect the People's Agenda, Not Hasten Nuclear Oblivion
This fiscal year 2024, the United States will spend $94.485 billion on all nuclear weapons programs, an increase of over $4 billion from last year.
Apr 15, 2024
Today, April 15, is the day we fund our nation's priorities as determined by our elected leaders.
Last month the United Way released its 2023 211 Impact Survey of roughly 16 million requests, offering insights into the trends and challenges faced by households and communities across the country. Topping the list were housing, utilities, and food assistance as the top needs of people seeking support nationwide. Similarly, a Gallop poll released last month listed the economy, inflation, hunger and homelessness, and healthcare costs in the top five priorities.
Where do nuclear weapons fit in? They're not even on the radar of most people, and particularly not mainstream news outlets. Yet this fiscal year 2024, the United States will spend $94.485 billion on all nuclear weapons programs. This is an increase of over $4 billion from last year. This expenditure is for weapons that can never be used without posing a threat to all of humanity. Yet these expenditures continue to grow out of control, year over year. It is fueled by the mythology of nuclear deterrence, the major driver of the arms race. Not to be outdone, every country feels driven to exceed the nuclear forces and capabilities of their adversaries. We spiral out of control toward nuclear oblivion, ever increasing the potential for nuclear war either by intent, miscalculation, or accident.
The nuclear abolition movement is here and growing.
Nuclear weapons threaten us every moment of every day. There are 12,119 weapons in the global nuclear arsenals. We know that the use of even a tiny fraction, less than one-half of 1% of these weapons over a single populated region, could cause catastrophic climate change lasting years and potentially putting 2 billion people at risk.
With this nuclear famine knowledge, the new arms race shifts from the paradigm of (MAD) Mutually Assured Destruction to (SAD) Self Assured Destruction. These weapons rob our communities of precious resources that could be redirected to the many needs that our communities cry out for. The very existence of nuclear weapons and programs is an economic, environmental, social, and racial justice issue. Yet this is a situation that does not have to be.
Back From the Brink is a growing movement across this nation. It calls for a no-first-use policy, ending sole presidential authority to launch nuclear weapons, ending "hair trigger alert," canceling the plans to replace the entire arsenal with new weapons, and most importantly, resumption of negotiations for a multilateral, verifiable treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons. This campaign is supported by U.S. House Resolution 77, which embraces the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and each of the precautionary measures in the Back From the Brink campaign. The resolution currently has 44 cosponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives.
This past year has seen heightened awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons moving into the mainstream with the release of the Academy Award-winning film Oppenheimer; The New York Times series "At the Brink," with an in-depth overview of the risk and potential impacts of nuclear war; last week's Boston Globe editorial "We Need to Start Worrying About the Bomb;" and the recently published books Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen and Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons by Sarah Scoles.
The nuclear abolition movement is here and growing. It is time for our budget priorities to reflect the people's agenda and to abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.
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'Social Security Is on the Ballot,' Say Advocates as Trump Threatens Cuts
"Not on my watch," said President Joe Biden in response to his Republican predecessor's latest threats to the safety net program.
Mar 11, 2024
With U.S. President Joe Biden's proposed 2025 budget released by the White House Monday just after former President Donald Trump issued his latest threat to slash Social Security and other safety net programs, economic justice groups said the choice between the two 2024 candidates could not be clearer.
"Make no mistake: Social Security is on the ballot this November," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works after Trump phoned in to CNBC's "Squawk Box" to say that "there is a lot you can do... in terms of cutting" so-called "entitlements" like the program for retirees as well as Medicaid and Medicare.
"And in terms of, also, the theft and the bad management of entitlements—tremendous bad management of entitlements—there's tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do," said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Q: We've got $33 trillion in debt, have you changed your view on how to handle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, something has to be done to bring down debt.
Trump: "There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting." [pivots to rambling, lies] pic.twitter.com/4lMvJ6mcVG
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) March 11, 2024
While Trump's answer was "largely gibberish," according to former National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti, his "express support for cutting Social Security and Medicare" was made clear.
A spokesperson for Trump's campaign said his comments were about cutting "waste" in the programs, but the remarks followed the former president's attempts to cut Social Security in all of the budget proposals he released during his term.
"It is consistent with Trump's past calls to privatize Social Security and raise the retirement age, as well as his slandering it as a 'Ponzi scheme,'" said Altman. "It is also consistent with the House Republican FY2025 budget, which proposes creating a commission designed to slash Social Security and Medicare behind closed doors."
The Republicans' budget proposal, which the House Budget Committee advanced last week, includes a so-called "fiscal commission" that would be empowered to fast-track Social Security and Medicare cuts.
"The contrast is clear," said U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). "Democrats want to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. The other party wants to end the programs as we know them."
Before winning the 2016 election, Trump called to raise the retirement age to 70 and promised to rescind the payroll tax—the taxes working people pay to fund Social Security and Medicare. He has frequently said cutting the programs, which about 70 million people rely on for post-retirement financial security and healthcare, was necessary to maintain their long-term solvency.
Despite Republicans' frequent claims that Americans' earned benefit programs are "bankrupting the country," Social Security is currently fully solvent—able to pay out full benefits to all beneficiaries—through 2034, and even if Congress took no action to expand the program, would be able to cover 80% of benefits after 2034. Medicare is currently solvent through 2028.
On social media, Biden responded to Trump's plan for the programs with four words: "Not on my watch."
Altman noted that Biden's proposed budget included "a very different vision for Social Security's future," with the president releasing a plan Monday "for protecting and expanding Social Security—and paying for it by requiring millionaires and billionaires to contribute their fair share."
Under a second Biden term, the White House said, there would be no benefit cuts to Social Security, and wealthy Americans—who currently do not pay Social Security taxes on all of their income, such as capital gains—would be required to pay "their fair share" to ensure retirees can continue to benefit from the program.
The Biden budget would also extend the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund permanently "by modestly increasing the Medicare tax rate on incomes above $400,000, closing loopholes in existing Medicare taxes, and directing revenue from the Net Investment Income Tax into the HI Trust Fund as was originally intended."
"Current law lets certain wealthy business owners avoid Medicare taxes on some of the profits they get from passthrough businesses," said the White House. "The budget closes this loophole and raises Medicare tax rates on earned and unearned income from 3.8% to 5% for those with incomes over $400,000."
Advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness pointed out that with Trump's plan to extend his 2017 tax cuts—which disproportionately benefited corporations and the wealthy and made billionaires $2.2 trillion richer—$3.5 trillion would be added to federal government's deficit.
"If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop them," said Biden on Monday after the release of his budget proposal. "Working people built this country, and pay more into Social Security than millionaires and billionaires do. It's not fair."
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'MAGA Math Doesn't Add Up': Democrats Rebuked for Backing GOP Cuts to IRS
"Appeasing Republican extremists with cuts to the IRS," said Groundwork Action, "is both fiscally and morally irresponsible."
Jan 09, 2024
Democratic leaders assured the U.S. public that a budget deal keeping non-military spending at its 2023 level would "protect key domestic priorities," but economists and economic justice advocates on Monday criticized the party for appeasing the GOP and permitting the inclusion of its top objective: accelerating cuts to the Internal Revenue Service in order to benefit wealthy tax evaders.
The deal, which provides $772.7 billion for "non-defense discretionary funding," also includes a provision allowing $10 billion in funding cuts to the IRS—which the GOP insisted upon last year in the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act to raise the debt ceiling—to go into effect in 2024 instead of 2025.
Rebuking a statement from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who said the deal will "maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown," the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) warned the agreement is "at best a funding freeze at a time when costs have risen, meaning that public services that people and communities count on will be cut."
Sharon Parrott, president of the progressive think tank, said that while Democrats rejected "further, deeper cuts that some House Republicans demanded"—a "critical" move—the acceleration of IRS funding cuts in the deal was "deeply unfortunate."
With the provision, said Parrott, the deal puts "tax cheaters' interests ahead of honest taxpayers."
"Any further cuts to the IRS should be rejected," she added. "House Republicans continue to create showdowns they claim are about spending and deficits, only to demand IRS funding cuts that would weaken tax enforcement, allow for more unlawful tax cheating, and increase the deficit."
Critics have warned that slashing IRS funding will not only make it more difficult for the government to stop tax evasion by the rich—costing an estimated $38.1 billion in lost tax revenue, according to a Center for American Progress (CAP) analysis—but will also make it more difficult for working people to access IRS services.
"Says a lot that this is a top conservative priority," said Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of the National Economic Council.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act increased IRS funding, noted David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness last week, cutting wait times and adding services for taxpayers "while simultaneously allowing the IRS to recoup funds from super-rich tax cheats."
Yet "Republicans continue to be laser-focused on a single issue—protecting the wealthiest from paying their fair share in taxes," Kass said. "Republicans continually shout about the size of the deficit, using it as an excuse to try to cut services that Americans rely on. Yet according to the Congressional Budget Office, cutting the IRS budget costs our country billions. Why then, would Republicans work so hard to slash this funding and add to the deficit? We know the answer: to protect mega-rich tax cheats rather than helping hard working Americans."
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy for CAP, pointed out that the deal finally reached by Republicans and Democrats includes about $32.5 billion in "real spending offsets"—less than the amount of government revenues that are lost when the IRS loses funding to hold tax cheats to account.
"For every $1 the IRS spends auditing wealthy tax cheats, America sees $22 in return," said campaign group Groundwork Action. "MAGA math doesn't add up."
"Appeasing Republican extremists with cuts to the IRS," the group added, "is both fiscally and morally irresponsible."
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