Okay, I know it dates me, but I was and am a fan of the comedian Dick Gregory. It was he who said that “I wouldn’t mind paying taxes — if I knew they were going to a friendly country.” While that comment could be interpreted in different ways in each decade, it does raise the question of how “friendly” we are as a country, based on how we spend the tax dollars collected. For example, in fiscal year 2015, military spending is projected to account for 55 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and U.S. military expenditures are still greater than the military spending of the next 10 largest countries combined. Based on 2014’s spending specifically, every hour, taxpayers in the United States paid $58 million for the Department of Defense and $8.43 million for Homeland Security.
By way of comparison, also in 2014, $7.81 million was spent every hour toward Education, $3.04 million toward the Environment, $36.91 million toward Medicaid and CHIP, and $13.29 million toward Nutrition Assistance.
In other words, $66.43 million for defense and security and $61.05 million for education, the environment, and human services for the poor. (https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/)
I confess to having a very difficult time these days with those who have such zeal for insisting on “religious freedom” as a means of denying certain fellow citizens some basic human rights, while denigrating as “unpatriotic” those who use religious values as the bases for being against warring activities. This, of course, is not a new phenomenon. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a 1953 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. “
As you face tax day, 2015, I hope you will join me in reflecting on our great nation’s priorities in the light of President Eisenhower’s concern. Inform yourself, listen carefully to campaign rhetoric as the current stable of political candidates share their priorities, and please consider voting for those who seek to promote spending on behalf of life-enhancing values instead of life-ending ideologies.
