SAVE our country

                During the past few weeks, political conversation has been dominated by the presidential debates.  The conversations have covered some trivial topics (bayonets, binders, and Big Bird) as well as key issues such as foreign policy and civil rights, but all any of us really care about is the economy.  The economy broke right before Obama took office, and while no one can deny it is improving, it is recuperating at a slow pace.  Some feel Obama has done a great job in turning the situation around, others feel Romney could do better, but we all agree it still needs to get better.

                Some citizens who are actually trying to contribute to an upswing in the economy have come together to form SAVE (Strengthening America’s Values and Economy).  These citizens, numbering in the millions, are comprised of over 1,900 organizations, ranging from faith-based organizations to small businesses, who all share a common goal: to make sure that Congress attempt to fix the budget in a responsible manner.  The group has united and signed a letter to Congress, urging that any budget plan meet 4 guidelines: 1) protect low-income citizens 2) promote job growth 3)increase revenues from fair sources and 4)responsibly make cuts in wasteful Pentagon and military spending.  The group’s goal is that as our economy is rising, we avoid making the same irresponsible mistakes that landed us in the mess in the first place and affected the nation’s lower and middle classes the worst.

                The letter to Congress has set its sights on tax cuts set up by the Bush administration, and proposed that instead of renewing the plan, we lower the tax cut percentage.  They point out that the average millionaire still receives an average of over a million dollars in tax cuts, and propose a new tax rate that would lower the average tax cut for millionaires to $20,130 (still 20 times larger than the average citizen pulling in $45,000).  The group also opposes our nation’s large, wasteful military spending, calling for cuts to the Pentagon.  Under SAVE’s plan, the Pentagon would cut millions from its budget, and as the letter points out, still be receiving more funding than it did at the height of the Cold War.

                However, the organization’s main goal, is to protect the nation’s lower-class citizens, whom are most affected by the downswing in the economy, and continue to be trampled by Congress’s attempts to fix the budget.  The letter from SAVE strongly pleads for Congress to make their cuts more responsibly and opposes some the cuts to domestic programs such as cutting WIC nutrition aid to over 750,000 women and children, cuts to retirees that left over 734,000 without heat, and reducing educational assistance to 1.8 million low-income children.  The bulk of the letter focuses on how our nation cannot recover by making our poor even poorer and placing cuts on our children’s education.

                In her editorial “Congress Still Has Time To Get It Right”, Deborah Weinstein comes out strongly in favor of SAVE’s plan, and hopes Congress will take it into consideration.  I do too.  While the group calims no political affiliation, it does have a strong liberal bias.  Ms. Weinstein, SAVE, and I both agree that this nation’s military budget is unnecessarily high, and ridiculously wasteful.  To get our economy back on track, we need to start targeting these improvident and extravagant expenses before making cuts in necessary programs such as education.  Both Ms. Weinstein and the letter to Congress make excellent claims about how it does not make sense to decrease spending on ensuring our nation’s lower income receive enough food and shelter while giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to the nation’s wealthiest two percent.  This op-ed piece’s goal is to garner support for the group, and while definitely aimed at a more liberal audience, hopefully citizens from both sides of the political spectrum can agree that as Congress makes delicate decisions about our nation’s budget, they have a responsibility to do so ethically, and avoid the mistakes that led to its collapse in the first place.