10. At $150 billion, this year’s proposed spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. Total U.S. military spending for FY2009 is roughly ten times the second largest military budget in the world, China’s.

9. The FY 2009 military budget is 120 times higher than the roughly $5 billion per year the U.S. government spends on combating global warming.

8. Military spending is more than the combined totals of spending on education, environmental protection, administration of justice, veteran’s benefits, housing assistance, transportation, job training, agriculture, energy, and economic development. FY 2008 military spending represents 58 cents out of every dollar spent by the U.S. government on discretionary programs -- the items that Congress gets to vote up or down on an annual basis.

7. U.S. military spending is larger than the combined gross domestic products (GDP) of all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

6. As the poverty rate continues to climb, the FY 2008 budget proposes cuts of $1.4 billion from the Community Development Block Grant; $436 million from Head Start; $1.1 billion from the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program; $669 million from Special Education; and $111 million from the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

5. Pres. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address highlighted America’s role in fighting global diseases and poverty in developing nations, and increases in two key programs. Yet his funding requests for child and maternal health, disaster assistance, and refugee assistance have fallen or remained flat; each is crucial for addressing both the causes and the symptoms of poverty.

4. Tens of billions of dollars in the administration’s budget proposal are for systems that are useless in conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan: the F-22 fighter ($4.6 billion), the CVN-21 aircraft carrier ($3.1 billion), the SSN-774 Virginia attack submarine ($2.7 billion), the Trident D-5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile ($1.2 billion), and Ballistic Missile Defense ($10.8 billion) are just a few examples of weapons that are unnecessary, unworkable, or both.

3. Despite uncritical media assertions, the federal deficit will almost certainly rise this year. (The Congressional Budget Office estimated in late January that the deficit for FY'07 will be $172 billion. While this is lower than the FY'06 deficit of $248 billion, it assumes that only $70 billion will be spent for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and does not include the $93 billion in additional supplemental funding already requested in early February for 2007. Including those funds, the projected FY'07 deficit jumps to $265 billion. Funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through supplemental appropriations, not the regular budget also makes the already inadequate spending oversight mechanisms even more opaque and useless.

2. The FY 2009 military budget proposal is 100 times higher than all spending on nonviolent methods of conflict resolution combined (peacekeeping, State Dept negotiation). US military spending will again be nearly 100 times larger than all federal budget funding for development aid, the peace corps and other methods of addressing root causes.

1. Proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2009 is larger than military spending by all of the other nations in the world combined.

Sources: Budget Priorities Activity www.lutheranpeace.org; Bill Hartung www.worldpolicy.org/atrc; Chris Hellman www.armscontrolcenter.org; Paul Isenberg www.independent.org; Jim Lobe www.antiwar.com; Sharon Parrott & Matt Fielder, www.cbpp.org; Winslow Wheeler www.cdi.org; Samuel Worthington, www.interaction.org; www.nationalpriorities.org. Compiled by Glen Gersmehl, Peace & Justice Resource Center, 1710 11th Ave, Seattle WA 98122, 206.720.0313x3, pjrcbooks@hotmail.com http://pjrcbooks.tripod.com