Feed hungry kids? Or build nuclear bomb plants?

 In Nuclear Weapons, Peace Action West News

Republican Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) is threatening to take $500 million worth of food away from poor children because “we can’t afford it.” But Congress manages to find billions to spend on nuclear weapons every single year. I want to change those priorities, don’t you?

Because thousands of you spoke out earlier this month, together we got Congress to protect funding for nonproliferation programs. The final budget for 2011 provided a $190 million increase for programs that lock up nuclear bomb-grade material around the world, a major accomplishment when the Republicans were fighting to cut almost everything. Thank you!

Can you help us build on that success by telling Congress to block wasteful spending on nuclear bombs and new bomb factories in 2012? Please click here to contact Congress today.

Even though we have fewer nuclear bombs in the US than we did at the height of the Cold War, we continue to spend more and more money on them every year. That’s insane! If we cut just a fraction of what we spend on these horrific, wasteful weapons, we’d still have plenty left over to provide lunches for poor children.

Current plans would spend $85 billion over the next 10 years, including $12 billion building two gigantic new bomb plants and $4 billion extending the life of old, outdated nuclear bombs. These projects don’t make sense if we are working to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. And meanwhile, efforts to lock up loose bomb-grade material, and to dismantle the weapons we already have, are chronically underfunded and behind schedule. Instead of securing this material for good, some people would rather spend billions to build another factory that would put weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear power reactors.

Please click here to tell Congress it’s time to fix our priorities.

Thank you for everything that you do.

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  • James Rogers
    Reply

    Feed hungry kids or build nuclear weapons? Is that a legitimate choice? We make it or approve it every single day we – all of us – do not exert maximum effort to stop this insanity. Consider this perspective: We starve U.S.American children so there will be enough money to build nuclear weapons so they can kill more children – by the millions.
    To be sure, most of us are not in positions where our efforts to stop the forces of evil will have much effect, but are we not guilty of child murder, anyway, simply by ignoring what they are doing, and going on enjoying our lives the best we can? Well, if we don’t awaken from our dreams and make the needed corrections – and soon – there will come a time when no more dreams will be possible.
    Many (not all) of the young people who run for state or federal election are idealistic and want to do real good, to correct as many of the things that have gone wrong as they can. And their electors share their optimism, but when the electeds enter their new offices they find the rules of the game have changed. Procedural pressures and member seniority work to change the way they think, forcing them to put money ahead of people. They learn to hate democracy because it places limits on their behavior. Thus democracy has been replaced by fascism and nazism. It comes right back to us. If we can’t find the courage to recall the evil ones, we are doomed.

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