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July 2006  News Bulletin Archive     

The WAND News Bulletin is posted on the web site monthly.
When it appears, WAND sends out a condensed version via email. If you would like to receive these email Bulletins, please let us know.


Table of Contents | Click to move to content within the Bulletin.

Capitol Hill Update

Federal Budget Watch

Women's Voices

Nuclear Notes

Iraq Updates

News from WiLL

Notable National Events

Ideas, Visions, and Resources for a Better World

Jobs and Opportunities

In the Field: WAND Chapter/Partner News & Events


Capitol Hill Update, July 2006

Congress is back in session for a little while before the August recess. So it's a good time to reach out and state your opinion.

Take action here. Try it! Really. Go ahead.

At the top of our action list this month:

  • War is not the answer in Iran, either: Smart, effective, committed diplomacy, not bombs: Take action.
  • Common Sense Budget Act: Take action.
  • Iraq war: Get HJ Res 55 out of committee and onto the floor so we can talk about it: Take action.
  • Stop the spread of new nukes: Oppose nuclear deal with India. Take action.

Take action right now! Thanks.

War as the last option: Diplomacy before invasion of Iran
Constructive diplomacy is critical to resolving the U.S.-Iran nuclear impasse peacefully. Urge your Senators to extend the current Iran and Libya Sanctions Act for a temporary period.


What makes George smile?

Why is this man smiling?
He's remaking the federal budget -- one dollar at a time. Click here to take action!


FEDERAL BUDGET WATCH

Notes from the WAND News Bulletin editor

Those good ole guys Ben & Jerry are at it again. This time, they're shining a spotlight on the federal budget, exposing the crazy way it allocates our national dollars.

Seems no matter how many times any of us says it, most people still don't know: the Pentagon is gobbling up your slice of the pie.

Not just the Pentagon: painfully wealthy defense contractors. The Pentagon spends wildly on wacky, obsolete weapons systems that were invented to fight the Cold War. Remember that war? It was some time ago, well before the "war on terror" and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those weapons are no good in the new wars. But we still keep spending on them.

Plus, we don't keep track of our spending on them. By all accounts, the Pentagon is throwing money around like a drunk CEO.

So Ben & Jerry are launching a new ice cream flavor to draw our attention to this: American Pie. If you see it in the market--and you're in the market for ice cream--grab some.

(First-hand accounts report back that it's quite tasty, as well as PC.)


Wouldn't you like to throw that pie out, and start fresh? Here's a game to get you started. Have some Chunky Monkey and play along...

DEFENSE BUDGET CUTS
Trim spending; use savings on national security
BY LAWRENCE J. KORB| Miami Herald | Click here for full article.

In a development that could signal the faint beginning of an enlightened shift in federal government spending, the Republican-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee voted to transfer $9 billion from the Pentagon budget to education, health and law enforcement accounts.

It took real courage for senators to approve this transfer in the midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was brave not because the money cut would affect the war effort in any way. In fact, the Iraq and Afghan wars are not funded by the annual defense budget but by supplemental appropriations.

No, what's impressive is the backbone that senators mustered to fend off defense contractor lobbyists who surely waged a frightening offensive to stop the sensible defense cuts.


Good news on budget masks grim longer-term view
Bush credits his tax cuts, surging revenues with deficit drop, but analysts look to future
Carolyn Lochhead | San Francisco Chronicle
July 12, 2006 | Full article, click here.

Bush credited his signature tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 for an anticipated 30 percent drop in the deficit to $296 billion. Although some analysts agreed that tax cuts helped produce higher economic growth and tax revenue, they warned that Bush and the Republican-led Congress are spending the money very fast.

The revenue burst, while welcome, masks a dangerous longer-term picture, the analysts said.

"I think you should buy yourself a very small brownie, light a candle and blow it out," said former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holz-Eakin. "This is tiny compared to the big problem, and it's on the wrong side of the budget. The big problem is on the spending side, and there is a question of just how permanent this will be."

If Republicans hope to calm their base over spending, they will find scant help from conservative budget analysts...

Democrats said $300 billion deficits are nothing to crow about.

"Despite the administration's spin, the truth is that the projected budget deficit is still the fourth largest in American history," said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena. "A nearly $300 billion budget deficit two years before millions of Baby Boomers begin to retire is absolutely nothing to celebrate.''

With the giant Baby Boom generation now just 18 months from the start of its retirement, the federal government stands on the brink of a historic economic juncture. As the 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964 retire, they will stop paying taxes into Social Security and Medicare and start collecting benefits.


Pentagon Struggles With Cost Overruns and Delays

By LESLIE WAYNE | New York Times | July 11, 2006
Full article, click here.

...Cost overruns have long been a Pentagon staple. But what has alarmed government oversight agencies and Pentagon observers, and spurred Congress to act, is the magnitude of the spending increases. Projects are as much as 50 percent over budget and up to four years late in delivery.

“We have been living in a rich man’s world for the last five years,” said Jacques Gansler, Pentagon under secretary for acquisition from 1997 to 2001 and vice president for research at the University of Maryland. “The defense budget has been growing so rapidly that we are less likely to put in many cost-sensitive reforms.”

In recent Congressional hearings and reports from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm, the Pentagon has been portrayed as so mired in bureaucracy and so enamored of the latest high-tech gadgetry that multi-billion-dollar weapon systems are running years behind in development and are dangerously over budget...

“It’s a perfect storm,” said Lawrence J. Korb, a former Pentagon assistant secretary, who served in the Reagan administration and is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “You had this big buildup in military spending. That took a bubbling problem and made it worse. It made it more difficult to audit and keep track of what was going on. It’s always been bad, but I’ve never seen it this bad.” ...


Gregg Bill would make far-reaching changes in budget rules
Bill Would Aim Budget Knife at Domestic Programs While Shielding Tax Cuts from Fiscal Discipline | July 2006
by Robert Greenstein, James Horney, and Richard Kogan
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | Click here.

Executive Summary
Sweeping legislation to radically alter federal budget procedures, designed by Senate Budget Committee chairman Judd Gregg and endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, was adopted by the Budget Committee on June 20. The bill may be brought to the Senate floor this summer (either as a single piece of legislation or as several separate bills). The legislation seeks to force dramatic changes in the budget. If enacted, it could have profound effects on American society.

In unveiling the bill earlier in June, Senator Gregg described it in moderate terms as offering “common-sense and fiscally responsible solutions” to problems like “duplicative and wasteful spending.” The legislation fails, however, to include common-sense budget reforms that have proved effective in the past, such as restoration of the Pay-As-You-Go rules on entitlement increases and tax cuts. Instead, the bill contains radical measures that could lead to massive cuts over time in Medicaid and Medicare and reductions in the vast majority of domestic programs, while shielding tax cuts from any fiscal discipline. The bill would do the following:

  • Impose caps on funding for discretionary programs that would force substantial cuts in public services. The Gregg bill would lock in, for the next three years, the overall discretionary funding levels proposed in President Bush’s most recent budget. To hit those levels, the President’s budget proposes $66 billion in domestic discretionary cuts over the next three years. By 2009, the President’s cuts would hit every domestic discretionary program area in the budget, with the sole exception of space, science, and technology.
  • Set fixed deficit targets, falling to 0.5 percent of GDP by 2012, enforced by automatic across-the-board cuts in all entitlement programs except Social Security.
  • Establish new definitions of “solvency” for Medicare and Medicaid that are unrelated to how these programs are financed, have a marked ideological tilt, and could not be met without harsh changes.
  • Establish a “fast-track” legislative mechanism that could allow a narrow partisan majority to ram through Congress terminations of (and major changes in) discretionary and entitlement programs.


"Why We Fight" -- Great New Movie on DVD
Named after the series of short films by legendary director Frank Capra that explored America’s reasons for entering World War II, "Why We Fight" surveys a half-century of military conflicts, asking how – and answering why – a nation of, by and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a government system whose survival depends on an Orwellian state of constant war.

WOMEN'S VOICES

Yap. Yap. Yap. We got a lot to say.

Notes from the WAND News Bulletin editor

WAND has endorsed several women running to serve in Congress for the first time: Click here to see the list.

Why you should care: do you think you're really represented up there on Capitol Hill right now? When one of those wealthy white men climbs on the soapbox and starts in again about "freedom" and "values" -- aren't you yelling at the radio?

We need a Congress that looks like the nation: all genders, all colors, all religions, all socioeconomic backgrounds. Otherwise, we're gonna get more of the same.

Speaking of which, here's a bit of news about a woman who clocks in for a living; and then serves in her state legislature. She gets it, and she brings it to the State House.

A Nevada State Senator Keeps Her Day Job

She's also a member of WiLL (Women Legislators' Lobby, a program of WAND), and quite a nice person.


Oh, yes. We visit Capitol Hill all the time.

Remembering Maya Miller, activist for peace
Maya Miller, philanthropist and champion for women, peace and the environment, died on May 31, 2006 at her ranch in Nevada. She was 90 years old. Her life epitomizes WAND's mission to empower women to act politically. She understood that change will come when women take the lead.


WAND women have been taking action in the last few weeks! A quick roundup.

Our efforts help STOP the move to "unsign" a major international treaty against nuclear testing
WAND and WiLL sprang into action in late June to head off a Senate amendment which would have sent U.S. foreign policy back to the Cold War.
Click here to read all about it.


Alabama: Reaching out to the Member of Congress with the most influence on using diplomacy (vs. military action) in Iran

In mid-July, WAND and WiLL reached out to women in Alabama, to urge them to contact Sen. Shelby (R-AL) about the need for diplomacy in Iran. Shelby chairs the Senate Banking Committee, and is the single Member of Congress who will most influence the decision to extend the current Iran and Libya Sanctions Act for a temporary period.

WiLL called all the women state legislators in Alabama and had them call Senator Shelby. WAND contacted members and friends and urged them to send a message to the Senator.

Take action right now! Thanks.

War as the last option: Diplomacy before invasion of Iran
Constructive diplomacy is critical to resolving the U.S.-Iran nuclear impasse peacefully. Urge your Senators to extend the current Iran and Libya Sanctions Act for a temporary period.



Arkansas:
Fabulous July 4th 2006 party!

AR WAND Fundraiser for the Beacon of Peace and Hope on July 4, 2006 at the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum next to the U.S.S. Razorback submarine on the north side of the Arkansas River.


It was standing room only at a forum on Capitol Hill organized by WAND entitled "Iran: US Policy Options (That Do Not Involve Military Action)."

Some 30 attended--interns to executive directors and every level in between--from religious, arms control and women’s groups. Speakers were Daryl Byler/Director of the Mennonite Central Committee Washington Office and visitor to Iran several times, Trita Parsi/Iranian scholar in residence at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and president of the National American Iranian Council, and Ivan Eland/Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute and former Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office and Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Event cosponsors were Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.


Take action right now! Thanks.

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