[Peace-discuss] IPA: Taxes Going to Military Spending

[Robert Naiman]

On the web: http://accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1970

Institute for Public Accuracy
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       Tuesday, April 14, 2009

       Taxes Going to Military Spending

CAROL KIGER ALLEN,  http://www.peacecoalition.org
Rev. ROBERT MOORE,   Allen is a retired economist and is on the board
of the Coalition for Peace Action & Peace Action Education Fund in New
Jersey. Moore is executive director for the group.

  Allen said today: "Tomorrow, we'll be administering our 'Penny
Poll.' People approaching the post office, many to mail their tax
returns by the deadline, will be handed ten pennies and invited to
distribute them among five tubes proportionate to how they would like
to see their federal tax dollars spent. The five choices will include:
military, environment, education, housing and health care.

  "For many years, the Penny Poll has had hundreds of participants
throughout the region with strikingly similar results: the vast
majority of respondents wanted the majority of their federal tax
dollar spent on education and health care. Next were environment and
housing. By a large margin, the least popular category of spending was
for the military."

  Moore said today: "Yet in the Fiscal 2009 Federal Budget, 54 percent
of the discretionary budget (which Congress can allocate how it wants,
and thus excludes trust funds like Social Security) is for military
spending, counting the cost of past wars. Less than 5 percent goes for
each of the other priorities poll takers have shown, by a large
margin, to be the places they want their federal tax dollars to go.
The only way these distorted budget priorities will change is if we,
average citizens, put enough pressure on our elected officials to
insist that it change."

Background:

The War Resisters League's "Where your Income Tax Money Really Goes"
at: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm

World Public Opinion's "U.S. Budget: The Public's Priorities" at:
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/85.php?nid=&id=&pnt=85&lb=btot


-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org