| February
27, 2004
Dear
Senators and Representatives,
In the Fiscal Year 2005 budget resolution, we
urge you to redirect the increase in the Defense
Department budget and the nuclear weapons portion
of the Department of Energy budget, beyond what
is needed to keep pace with inflation, to domestic
preparedness.
To
ensure security at home, new funds should be directed
to under-funded domestic preparedness needs, given
the fact that the Pentagon budget, for which $401.3
billion was appropriated for FY04, is sufficient
to maintain the best trained and best equipped
military in the world. Real growth (i.e., beyond
increases for inflation) in the military budget
is $7.5 billion in FY05 at the President's request.
Very little funding for homeland security is contained
within the Department of Defense budget. Federal
support for domestic preparedness comes principally
from the Department of Homeland Security. In addition,
funding comes from ten other departments and several
agencies.
Public
officials in state and local government are struggling
with record budget deficits and skyrocketing costs
for both ongoing and new domestic preparedness
needs. Our state and local budgets are overwhelmed
with the funding needs to train and equip our
first responder networks, to enhance our public
health capacity, to identify biological and chemical
threats rapidly, and to respond as needed to protect
our citizens. We must secure and police our infrastructure
facilities such as water treatment plants, power
plants, and nuclear facilities. Our ports, both
marine and air, require extensive efforts to meet
potential challenges.
State
legislators and governors juggle these challenges
alongside the enormous funding gaps for our schools,
our higher education programs, our health budgets,
early childhood programs, and the urgent need
to invest in new technologies, job development,
and economic recovery. State and local budgets
for domestic preparedness require a robust partnership
with the federal government, a partnership that
is adequately resourced with federal dollars to
match the stated commitment in Washington to help
shoulder our nation's domestic preparedness needs.
Please
support a redirection of $7.5 billion in the Department
of Defense budget and the nuclear weapons portion
of the Department of Energy budget to domestic
preparedness to meet critical needs at the state
and local level. We at the state level cannot
adequately fund the new domestic preparedness
needs while we are struggling to meet our ongoing
funding obligations, many of them mandated by
federal requirements or by our own state constitutions.
Times such as these require innovative leadership
and courageous decisions. We call on those of
you in Congress to help us meet the obligations
to our citizens to ensure their welfare, through
our traditional programs and commitments, as well
as by meeting the new urgencies forced upon us.
Sincerely,
State
Legislators |
