A Unified Security Budget for the U.S., 2007
From Foreign Policy in Focus: "The rhetoric of our national security strategy needs to be connected to its budgetary reality. To this end, this task force of security experts recommends that the federal budget documents presented to Congress include a Unified Security Budget (USB) drawing together in one place all the categories of national security spending."

National Priorities Project scores with another report on our federal defense budget.

If you ask us: yes, we could come up with a better security plan.

Find out about an alternative plan to increase our national security, save money, and free up dollars for local needs. A two-page publication is available for each state. Check it out.

It's not all bad news: Senate makes one very good decision -- not to repeal estate tax
For more and the latest, visit FairEstateTax.org.

...We're now spending an estimated $8 billion every month in Iraq and about $1 billion monthly in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers attempted yet again last week to repeal the estate tax that primarily affects only the superwealthy -- a move that some analysts say would put a $1 trillion hole in federal pockets over the next decade.

At what point, you have to wonder, will the people running our country realize that they can't keep handing out cash to the rich while also spending money like a sailor on shore leave?

The Senate on Thursday rejected the latest stab at eliminating the estate tax (or "death tax," as Republicans morbidly put it), but conservative lawmakers said they'll soon return with rejiggered legislation.

The nation faces rising inequality. Since 1980 the gap between the earnings of the top fifth and the bottom fifth has jumped by almost 50 percent. The United States is by some measures the most unequal society in the rich world and the most unequal that it's been since the 1920s. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Identify the most progressive federal tax and repeal it...

...If the abolitionists succeed, some other tax will eventually be raised to make up for the lost revenue. So which tax does Congress favor? The income tax, which discourages work? A consumption tax, which hits the poor hardest? The payroll tax, which is both anti-work and anti-poor? Really, which other tax out there is better?

The abolitionists don't respond to this question because there is no convincing answer. Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has written that "we would be hard-pressed to find evidence that, compared with the alternatives, a reasonable estate tax significantly discourages work or innovation or savings." In other words, killing the estate tax and raising some other tax instead would damage the economy. And that's before you take into account the positive distortions introduced by the estate tax, such as more social mobility and higher charitable giving. Charitable bequests will fall by at least a fifth if the estate tax is repealed permanently.

Auditors fault missile defense plans

By Andrea Shalal-Esa | Reuters | June 1, 2006 | Full article, click here.

The United States has spent about $91 billion since the mid-1980s to defend against enemy ballistic missiles, but it has no clear criteria for deciding to use the system and its operational costs remain unclear, the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday.

The missile defense system, which the Bush administration had hoped to have ready by 2004, is designed to help protect the United States against missiles that could carry nuclear, chemical or germ warheads.

The GAO, the non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress, urged the Pentagon to draw up standards that each component and the overall ballistic missile defense system must meet before they can be used, just as other major weapons programs do...