When is a "Town Hall Meeting" not a "Town Hall Meeting?"
When attendance is limited to employees of a self-interested foreign corporation that is playing host to a reverse lobbying event.
The event in question is the "Preserving America's Strength" show being staged by U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham on Tuesday morning, July 31 at BAE Systems in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The Senators say they are trying to "sound the alarm" about the economic impact of cuts in military spending if the Pentagon is forced to cut $500 Billion from its budget over the next ten years.
The budget cuts, taken from a ten-year budget of about $5.5 Trillion, would be matched by an equal amount of cuts in non-military spending under a process known on Capitol Hill as "sequestration." This would come after a decade in which Pentagon spending has risen by more than 35 per cent, even after accounting for inflation and excluding the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Members of the public are not invited to the "Town Hall Meeting."
That means the Senators are not likely to get questions about the job or economic impact of cuts in areas such as housing, nutrition assistance, health care, education, and environmental protection.
Nor are they likely to hear that canceling the Pentagon budget cuts will either mean deeper cuts in human needs programs, higher taxes, continued deficit spending, or some combination of the three.
It's possible that no one present will point out the United States military spending is already almost as much as that of all the other nations of the world combined and that many of the big-spenders among them are our allies.
While cuts in weapons production -- not to be confused with cuts in pay or benefits for active duty and retired members of the armed services -- would lead to job losses in those industries, a recent report from Senator Tom Harkin says "the economic effects of cuts to non-defense programs could be worse than cuts to Pentagon spending." According to Sen. Harkin's analysis, sequestration would cut $3.5 million from special education funding in New Hampshire, costing the state 44 jobs and reducing services to infants and children. $1.2 million in Head Start cuts would cost 41 jobs and eliminate services for 194 more children. Cancer screening for women, low income heating assistance, family violence prevention, assistance for unemployed workers, and dozens of other programs assisting people in New Hampshire would suffer.
Even the Aerospace Industry Association says cuts in non-defense programs would have a more harmful effect on the nation's economy than would cuts in defense spending.
"$1 billion spent on each of the domestic spending priorities will create substantially more jobs within the U.S. economy than would the same $1 billion spent on the military," according to a recent report from the UMASS Political Economy Research Institute.
"Dollar for dollar, clean energy and health care support 50% more jobs than defense spending, and education supports more than twice as many," says Heidi Garrett-Peltier, co-author of the UMASS study. "Cutting the budget for education, then, results in twice as many jobs lost as cutting the budget for defense."
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"Preserving America's Strength" - "Town Hall Meetings"
Monday, July 30, 2012
TAMPA, FLORIDA
WHO: Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
WHAT: Town Hall Meeting highlighting impact of looming defense cuts
Media Availability following event
WHEN: Monday, July 30, 2012, 9:00 a.m. ET
Press set-up time, 8:30 a.m. ET
WHERE: Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation
124 South Franklin Street
Tampa, FL 33602
FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
WHO: Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
WHAT: Town Hall Meeting highlighting impact of looming defense cuts
Media Availability following event
WHEN: Monday, July 30, 2012, 1:30 p.m. ET
Press set-up time, 1:00 p.m. ET
WHERE: Fayetteville Technical Community College
2201 Hull Road
Fayetteville, NC 28303
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
WHO: Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
WHAT: Town Hall Meeting highlighting impact of looming defense cuts
Media Availability following event
WHEN: Monday, July 30, 2012, 5:00 p.m. ET
Press set-up time, 4:30 p.m. ET
WHERE: Half Moone Cruise Terminal
1 Waterside Drive
Norfolk, VA 23510
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
MERRIMACK, NEW HAMPSHIRE
WHO: Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
WHAT: Employee Town Hall Meeting highlighting impact of looming defense cuts
Media Availability following event
WHEN: Tuesday, July 31, 2012, 9:30 a.m. ET
Press set-up time, 9:00 a.m. ET
WHERE: BAE Systems' Worrell/Weeks Aircrew Protection Center
MER 15, 130 Daniel Webster Highway
North Merrimack, NH 03054