This week, I would like to respond to a piece written by Josh Veronica, Class of 2018, called “The 2015 Budget: A mixed bag.”
Consistent with most conservative opposition to President Obama, his critique is riddled with extreme and ambiguous language, refuses to acknowledge that the budget deficit has been cut by nearly two- thirds since President Obama took office and complains incessantly about modest increases in funding to education, healthcare and science while completely ignoring the fact that military spending accounts for 54 percent, or $625.2 billion, of the proposed discretionary budget.
To put things into perspective, the United States was spending $720 million dollars per day on military initiatives at the height of the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Veronica accuses proposals like providing daycare assistance to low-income families of being “exorbitant” and the proposal to make community college free to students who meet the necessary requirements as being “astronomical.” Otherwise known as “America’s College Promise,” this plan to expand educational opportunities to families across the country is expected to cost $60 billion over the next ten years, amounting roughly to an annual total of $6 billion, and is by far the most expensive single social welfare initiative proposed in the President’s budget.
Yet comparatively, the funding necessary to pay the full annual cost of this education initiative is the equivalent of 8.3 days–less than 200 hours–of what it cost to fight two wars in the Middle East. However, consistent with conservative rhetoric from the political right, Veronica says nothing about military funding, only that, “The president also included foreign policy initiatives in his budget, which appeared strong relative to how his administration has handled foreign affairs,” and that “the budget wants to continue to fund anti-Islamic State efforts in the Middle East…”
The most concerning point about this immense, yet unquestioned amount of military funding that is supported by a majority on the political right is its relative size to the rest of the world. Right now, students across the country are trying to learn in schools that are filled with outdated technology. Today, single parents struggle to afford childcare as they try to work to put food on the table. As we speak, more than 2 million people earn minimum wages, which is less than half of what has been determined to be a “living wage,” or a wage that places you above the poverty line. Yet, the United States spends more on our military than the following 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. If it means putting food on the table for a low income family, or giving a young person an opportunity to climb out of poverty with access to a college education, conservatives write the cost off as being “exorbitant” or “astronomical.” However, if it means funding our 12th aircraft carrier or paying military contractors, it is apparently necessary beyond a doubt. It is sad to know that a majority of our Congress believes more in funding a missile than it does a food stamp or a college degree.
In addition to his scathing attack on modest funding increases for social programs, while virtually ignoring the military expenditures that make up over half of our total budget, Veronica disdainfully highlights a key feature of President Obama’s proposal, which increases the capital gains tax to 28 percent for wealthy individuals at the top rung of the socioeconomic ladder. This standard that was created and endorsed by America’s second most wealthy individual, Warren Buffett, who holds a net worth of $67 billion, has been dubbed the “Buffett Rule.” This rule essentially says that a wealthy individual making capital gains should not pay less in taxes on that revenue than their secretaries do on their significantly lower wages. How novel and unreasonable of an idea.
Contrary to what Veronica and others like him suggest, President Obama’s budget not only expands opportunities to millions of individuals with sound social welfare initiatives, but it is done so in a way that also continues to close the budget deficit that began under the Bush Administration. In his State of the Union Address, President Obama proclaimed that we are “freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth,” insisting that “it is now up to us to choose who we want to be for the next fifteen years and decades to come.” The President’s proposed budget not only makes significant progress in the short term, but it lays the foundation for a promising future in the years and decades to come.
Connell is the president of the College Democrats.
Connell is a member of the class of 2015.
