What would you rather see your tax dollars fund? Food stamps for 46 million Americans? Or wars we don’t need?

The choice for most of us is clear. When asked, “What would you cut if you have to,” Americans chose cuts in military spending over cuts in Social Security or Medicare — three to one.

But poll Congress and you get different answers. On May 7 the House Budget Committee voted to slash the food stamp program and cut Medicaid so the Pentagon can keep pouring money into useless wars and unnecessary weapons. Let’s see what this means in human terms.

Half of the 46 million Americans who rely on food stamps are children. According to the Coalition on Human Needs, two million people — mostly seniors and working families with children — will lose their food stamps completely. Over a quarter million of the children will also lose free school lunches. Employment and training programs for food stamp recipients will be cut 72 percent. Working adults will also lose childcare and transportation subsidies that they need to get to work.

We’re not done with children. GOP leaders want to deny child tax credits to low-income immigrant families who use taxpayer ID numbers instead of Social Security numbers when they file tax returns. This is known as punishing people for paying their taxes. Families who make only $21,000 a year will have to pay $1,800 more.

Actually, children seem to be a target in this campaign to keep Pentagon dollars flowing. Millions of families with children will also lose health coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Childcare and children who are abused will also lose funding, as will senior anti-abuse programs and elder Meals on Wheels.

In the Budget Committee’s moral universe, military contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing (tax bill on profits of $9 billion: negative $178 million, meaning we gave Boeing our tax money) are more deserving than families who lost their jobs in the Wall Street bonfire three years ago, lost their homes in the bank scams that caused it, or children whose one square meal a day will soon be a school lunch — if Congress doesn’t cut that too.

How do they justify these cuts? In extremely vague language, one thing they’re saying is that that we have to protect military personnel and their families. Ask your pastor, minister, rabbi or imam about the morality of sacrificing one set of people to benefit another. Beyond that, it’s the Pentagon brass, not liberals or peaceniks, who are trying to cut healthcare benefits and other military family supports. Like any big corporation, they’re taking savings out of their workforce.

Here’s another vague justification: any cuts would “hollow out the national defense.”

It’s true, as Capitol Hill hawks repeat, that Air Force pilots are flying 20-year-old F-16 fighters. But that’s because the F-22 — the replacement Pentagon planners ordered over a decade ago — is so dangerous that some pilots are refusing to fly it. It may already have killed one pilot by cutting off his oxygen supply. The even newer and more expensive F-35 is “overweight, overpriced, underperforming, and unnecessary,” says defense critic William Hartung. In fact, it’s so overpriced — $380 billion for 2400 planes, not counting future maintenance and operating costs of $1 trillion — that cutting this turkey alone would provide the $300 billion that the House Budget Committee is trying to save by slashing safety net programs. If the House Budget Committee is looking for waste in government, the Pentagon is the place to start.

The Pentagon’s problem isn’t lack of money. The problem is that weapons spending is out of control and no amount of money will fix that. A stiff diet might help focus them, though. Fewer dollars would still provide plenty of money for the “Defense” Department’s real mission: actually defending us.

No country on earth comes close to the United States in military firepower. And few countries can match the callousness of the House leaders who would sacrifice children’s meals so they can build useless weapons.

America’s soul is on the line this week. Call your Representative this week and ask how he or she will vote on the budget bills that are coming up — the reconciliation bill this week and the deficit reduction bill next week. The answer you get will tell you if our soul is in the right hands.

Jeff Blum is executive director of USAction.

And now, unless Congress acts soon, an important loan program that serves almost 8 million college students will double its interest rates! A vote in the Senate may be just a couple weeks away, so please contact your Senators now.

We all know that making college affordable for all Americans isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s right for the economy. Right for an America that wants to compete in the world. The U.S. once ranked first in college graduation rates; now we rank 12th.

That’s just not right.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) have just introduced the Student Loan Affordability Act, a bill that will prevent the interest rates on nearly 8 million Stafford loans from doubling — an increase that would cost the average student $2,800.

Will you tell Congress to not let student loan rates double before it’s too late?

Americans now owe more in tuition debt than credit card debt, with total outstanding student loan debt in America expected to exceed $1 trillion this year.² Millions of hardworking, taxpaying, educated Americans are being crushed under the weight of their educational debts and it’s doing further damage to our economy — students with outstanding debt can’t buy homes and can’t contribute to the economy as full consumers.

We need a real economic stimulus and jobs plan. Investing in our students is the way to do it.

Tell Congress to not let student loan rates double before it’s too late!

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the perfect example of waste and abuse in the military budget. After ten years and billions of taxpayers’ dollars, we have little to show for the Pentagon’s most expensive program in history except money down the drain.

The F-35 came with the promise of affordability, but current estimates place the lifetime operational cost at $1.5 trillion, more than three times the initial estimate of $420 billion.¹ That’s $18,439.33 per taxpayer! And don’t expect that number to go anywhere but up.

Even Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates have soured on the plane, with Gates calling the F-35 an “unnecessary and extravagant expense.”²

Cutting the F-35 is a no-brainer and could save up to $600 billion over the next decade without undermining our national security.³ But Republicans in Congress are fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent any cuts to the military budget whatsoever.

We know that public pressure works. Back in 2009, we led a successful campaign to defeat the F-22, another plane we couldn’t afford and didn’t need.

Now we’re back again to defeat the F-35. But we’ll only be successful if we show Congress where the American people stand. Will you tell Congress to stop funding the F-35 now?

1 – http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/30/f-35-total-costs-soar-to-1-5-trillion-lockheed-defends-program/

2 – http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/f35_engine.html

3 – http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/01/defense_austerity.html

In a scene reminiscent of last fall’s Occupy Seattle protests, several hundred people rallied in downtown Seattle today shouting that the 1 percent needs to pay more in taxes. 

Activists marched to the Wells Fargo Bank building on 3rd Avenue and stretched large faux yellow crime scene tape around part of it. They pretended to auction off assets such as the CEO’s salary.

Rachael DeCruz, with Washington Community Action Network, helped organize the event.

“We’re just trying to highlight the facts that everyone here is paying their fair share in taxes and large corporations like Wells Fargo aren’t,” she said.

At 4:30 p.m., the group plans to hold a protest in Denny Park near Amazon.com’s headquarters.  

Activists point out that, while the corporate tax rate is 35 percent, companies such as Amazon pay only a fraction or that because of tax loop holes.

Click over to KPLU for radio coverage!

USAction affiliate New Jersey Citizen Action and allies rallied at one of the many beneficiaries of Gov. Christie’s handouts to corporations that don’t need it.

Coverage below via NJToday.net -

NJ Working Families Protest Christie & Corporate Welfare

NEWARK – On Tax Day, two weeks after the New York Times tallied Chris Christie’s corporate welfare awards at $1.5 billion, the Republican Governor is taking some heat from the Better Choices for New Jersey coalition over his plan to give Prudential $250 million in public funds to move a few blocks down the street.

Activists from around the state gathered outside of insurance giant’s corporate headquarters with a U-Haul moving truck and offered to move the employees ‘free of charge’ if Prudential, one of the nation’s most profitable companies, gave up Christie’s proposed $250 million tax credit.
…..
Every dollar spent on ineffective and wasteful corporate subsidies is a dollar that isn’t spent on essential services,” said Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, Executive Director of New Jersey Citizen Action. “Instead of giving even more tax cuts to corporations, Governor Christie and the legislature should restore devastating cuts to public investments like the Earned Income Tax Credit, New Jersey Family Care, foreclosure prevention, mass transit, and public education. These are the sort of crucial investments that will ensure New Jersey is a good place to live, work, and do business.”

In his 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush vowed to protect Medicare two sentences after he trashed “nationalized health care.” The fact that Medicare is our national health care system was apparently as lost on the president — and most of the listening American public — as it was on the senior citizens who went to town hall meetings to protest the government takeover of health care after seeing their doctor earlier in the day on government health insurance.

When was the last time you heard someone define Medicare as “our national health care system for seniors?” Imagine if that was a regular description that Democratic elected officials and Medicare advocates used. Maybe the concept might begin to take hold.

People filter the experiences of their own lives and the world at large through stories and narratives. The greatest hole in progressive communication about government is not the absence of myriad good examples of how government meaningfully improves people’s lives and drives a more prosperous economy or a host of recent examples of how stripping government protections is disastrous. What is missing is the consistent telling of our story about the role of government in creating broader shared prosperity, opportunity, security, and freedom.

One mistake that progressive advocates of government make is to make government the subject. People don’t wake up in the morning wondering about government; they wake up thinking about getting their kids to school and themselves to work. They don’t worry about the size of government; they fret about keeping their jobs, how they are going to pay for their kids’ college and have enough left over to retire. The story we tell has to be focused on the core anxieties of ordinary people and how government can address those concerns.

Like any yarn, our story has to include heroes and villains. And since this is a narrative about how the world works, we need to explain what the villains did wrong to get us into this mess and what the heroes will do to rescue us, or better yet, themselves.

For the past year I have been working with a group of progressive leaders and communicators on the development of a “progressive economic narrative,” a way of telling our story about the role of the individual, business, and government in creating shared prosperity. The goal of the group is “to develop and promote a common economic narrative that is used across the progressive movement, a powerful story that we are telling consistently through words and actions, in our communications and organizing.”

The progressive economic narrative we’ve drafted has five conceptual pillars, which describe what went wrong with the economy, define a powerful economy and how we get there, outline the political challenge, and conclude with a call to action. It has villains — Wall Street speculators, CEO campaign contributors, and the super-rich — who did bad things: cut our wages and benefits, shipped our jobs overseas, got rich quickly at the expense of American workers and families. These evildoers bribed politicians to rig the rules in their favor, and in doing so, crashed the economy, crushed and closed the middle class, and wrecked our democracy.

The hero in our tale is the great American middle class, the engine of our economy. At the heart of our story is the notion that, as Senator Paul Wellstone used to say, “We all do better when we all do better.” This is a statement of economic truth and of our values. We believe that the true measure of our economic success is the well-being of our families and the productivity of our nation, not the stock market and corporate profits. And that economic progress is driven by innovating and investing in the future so that all Americans have good jobs and can educate their kids, support their families, and retire with security. We all do better when we all do better.

To get there, our hero — the middle class, working families, the 99% — has to fight to free the government from the grip of the rich and powerful and put our democracy back in the hands of ordinary Americans. That matters because the great American middle class does not happen by accident; it is built by decisions we make together. Decisions made when the government works for all of us — decisions to invest in our people, to expand opportunity and security to pave the way for business to innovate and meet the future, and to write rules that boost businesses that do the right thing, like creating good jobs in America or safeguarding the environment.

You will recognize that this is a very different story from that told by the right, in which economic success depends on rugged individuals in a market free from government. Our story is that people, business, and government drive the economy by working together to create broadly shared prosperity, opportunity, and security.

If this seems simplistic, that’s a strength. It is also misleading, because so much of communication on our side fails to talk about our view of what makes the economy a success and how the main actors — people, business, and government — each play a role. Simplicity is a powerful asset if we begin to tell the story consistently in all our communications, which means our words and our actions. The “we” here needs to be broad, including progressive organizers, activists, pundits, journalists, and academics.

If we are to help Americans rediscover government, we need to keep telling a powerful story about how a government that works for all of us will allow each of us to prosper and believe again in an America in which our children will prosper.

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction and USAction Education Fund, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform.

USAction affiliates and partners also delivered thousands of your petition signatures and letters to Congress to Senators leading up to last night’s vote on the Buffett Rule. Check out some early reports, photos and press from the field below:

New Hampshire Citizens Alliance for Action rallied outside of Sen. Ayotte’s office in Nashua: (Coverage below via the Nashua Telegraph, including photos, video and more.)

“Millionaires and billionaires should pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries,” said Olivia Zink, community organizer at New Hampshire Citizens Alliance for Action. “If we really want to get serious about reducing the deficit, then millionaires and billionaires should share in that burden.”

Organizers of the rally said the act will help cut down the national deficit and ensure that millionaires are paying their share instead of using tax loopholes and shelters. Ayotte is opposed to the plan, which is why one of the signs targeted the senator from Nashua.

“Senator Ayotte, stop giving tax breaks to the rich,” the sign said.

Zink also presented Ayotte staffers with a petition signed by 746 New Hampshire residents calling on Ayotte to vote for the bill. That’s just a fraction of the more than 65,000 people who have signed the petition nationally, she said.

In Rhode Island, Ocean State Action rallied with allies and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to thank the Senator for his leadership on tax fairness and the Buffett Rule specifically. (Photo of the event to the right from RIFuture.org.)

Sen. Whitehouse was the original sponsor of the “Buffett Rule” – the Paying a Fair Share Act, which over 65,000 USAction members have taken action in support of.

Maine People’s Alliance held a rally outside of a Bank of America in Portland with a simple message: Bank of America = Bad for America! We pay our taxes, why don’t they!

Photos of the event from MPA’s Facebook page.

United Action for Idaho and West Virginia Citizen Action Group placed op-eds calling for passage of the Buffett Rule in their state’s largest papers.

WVCAG ED Gary Zuckett was featured in the Charleston Gazette: On Tax Day, who will pay their fair share?

We know what a successful economy looks like. It is one that works for all of us — or, to use the current vernacular, it is an economy that works for the 99 percent as opposed to the one percent. It’s an economy where every American has a good job, can educate their kids, support their family and retire with security.

But this full employment economy won’t happen by accident. It will only happen by the right decisions and investments we agree to make together. And on our way toward rebuilding the shattered middle class and expanding opportunity for those who aspire to join it, we have encountered a difficult roadblock.

What is that roadblock? It is CEOs of corporations who are “too big to fail.” It is greedy Wall Street speculators and their lobbyists in Congress who rig the system. It is neo-conservative obstructionists in Congress who on will oppose the Buffett Rule and the common sense idea that we all should pay our fair share.

What is the solution? This coming week, the U.S. Senate will have the opportunity to fix the tax system so millionaires don’t pay lower taxes than their secretaries and all the rest of us. Our Senator Rockefeller should be commended for being a co-sponsor of this legislation. I hope Sen. Manchin stands with the working people of West Virginia and supports the Buffett Rule also. 

Sen. Manchin did, in fact, support the Buffett Rule yesterday.

UAI ED Adrienne Evans was featured in the Idaho Statesman with her op-ed,  Buffett Rule is the fair thing to do.

The GOP came out on top because, as Steve Benen says, ”the Senate is a dysfunctional mess” where “45 votes trumps 51 votes.”

The GOP ignored the majority of Americans who understand that it’s only fair that millionaires and billionaires pay at least as much as middle and working class families.

CNN released a poll yesterday just before the successful GOP filibuster showing 7 in 10 Americans support the Buffett Rule. The poll also showed broad support across the political spectrum, with “nearly seven in ten independent voters and even 53% of Republicans favoring the measure.”

This vote follows years of endless obstruction by the Senate GOP on vital legislation to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, increase access to quality affordable health care for millions and keep our communities’ teachers, nurses and first responders on the job.

It’s clear the GOP is beholden to their corporate CEO donors and the 1%. That’s why we’ve got a plan to defeat these right-wing zealots by registering and turning out progressive voters this fall in key states and congressional districts. Will you donate $5 right now to help us take back Congress from the 1%?

With your help, we’ll be working in:

•    8 of the 12 states key in deciding the presidential election; 
•    Nearly half of the Congressional seats needed to win the majority in the U.S. House,including some of the most progressive candidates in the country like Ann McLane Kuster (NH-2);
•    7 key U.S. Senate races, including 2 of the top progressive Senate candidates – Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. And with Sen. Olympia Snowe stepping down, we have an opportunity to pick up an additional Senate seat in Maine!
•    2 of the most competitive Governors’ race in the country (NH and WV);
•    1 of the most important ballot initiatives in the country (overturn Ohio’s anti-voting rights law H.B. 194);
•    9 states with key state legislative races that could determine control of a legislative body or deny a right-wing supermajority; 

These are all states where USAction and our affiliates have been long-time leaders waging issue campaigns, building coalitions and creating a progressive infrastructure, and where we will continue to do so long after Election Day. The core of the 2012 plan is based on two paid organizers in each congressional district recruiting 400 volunteers and coordinating a 4-month volunteer canvass that can build our base by contacting at least 7,500 voters that support us and getting them to vote.

To be successful, however, we need to start these volunteer canvasses by May 15th – that’s just 1 month away! Your donation of $5 today can help us fund these organizers and their outreach, and make the difference in November. Then next year we can pass a Buffett Rule, and bring sanity back to our government.

We need a Congress that works of, by and for the people — not just the 1%. Donate $5 now so we can take back Congress for the 99%.

Right-wing zealots — who are opposed to raising taxes on anyone at anytime forever — want the Senate to filibuster it. The lobbyists of the 1% are packing the halls of Congress. So we need to be heard, now.

Our country isn’t broke, but we can’t afford a tax code riddled with loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans to dodge paying their fair share. The Buffett Rule is only the first step, but it at least puts a limit to the tax dodging.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many strategists suggested that the Cold War arms race had bankrupted its economy and caused its downfall. More than 20 years later, it appears that some in Washington are driving the U.S. toward a similar fate.

Most recently, House Republicans (led by Rep. Paul Ryan) introduced a budget that both lavishly funds the Pentagon and slashes domestic programs. Mr. Ryan has even questioned whether generals were being honest in their assessment of the president’s budget, suggesting, “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice.” House Republicans seem to be ignoring the advice of our military leaders and are seeking to fund the Pentagon beyond what it requires or has requested.

For example, the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) is now slated to cost the American taxpayer $1.5 trillion, with about a trillion attributable to its expensive maintenance costs.  This is a perfect example of wasteful programs: the F-35 is becoming too expensive to bother flying in the first place.  Instead of delaying contracts, it’s time for elected officials to pull the plug.

Meanwhile, the foundations of a strong economy — public education, infrastructure development, commitments to research and development and a secure safety net that protects our most vulnerable citizens from poverty — go starved for funding. This is the trade-off of the Ryan Republican budget proposal.

But while the Wall Street banks have quickly returned to making record-breaking profits and bonuses, helped in large part by the $700 billion bailout by the American taxpayer, little has changed to prevent the types of abuses that got us into this mess.

That’s why it was celebrated when President Obama announced during his State of the Union address, the creation of a special investigative unit on mortgage origination and securitization. Better yet — Obama appointed NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to co-chair the task force who has broad credibility as a real prosecutor following his earlier refusal to sign on to the 50 State AG robo-signing deal with the big banks.1

According to the White House, “the goal of this joint investigation will be threefold: to hold accountable any institutions that violated the law; to compensate victims and help provide relief for homeowners struggling from the collapse of the housing market, caused in part by this wrongdoing; and to help us finally turn the page on this destructive period in our nation’s history.”

This is all welcome news, but as more details emerged on the task force, one thing became apparent — our top cop to investigate these financial crimes has been massively understaffed and outspent.

Schneiderman has been tasked with investigating some of the most serious crimes of the housing crisis, but with a staff of only 55 investigators and lawyers — roughly the same number of staff that work at a single McDonald’s franchise, and less than 10% of the staff assigned to investigate the S&L scandal. Even the Enron scandal had 100 investigators on the beat, and that’s small potatoes in comparison to the level of systemic corruption and greed that almost resulted in the toppling of the world economy.2

Four years after the banks crashed the economy, homeowners are still underwater, millions are out of work and cases against megabucks like Citigroup and Bank of America are being settled for pennies on the dollar.3 It’s time for justice to be served on Wall Street.

President Obama’s task force is a step in the right direction — but if justice is going to be served, we need to give Eric Schneiderman the backup he needs to put the banksters in jail.

Sign our petition now, asking Congress and the President to give Eric Schneiderman the tools he need to bring the banks to justice.

1 – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/obama-housing-crisis-unit_n_1229617.html

2 – http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/01/27/additional-resources-for-financial-fraud-panel-look-light/

3 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/housing-secretary-donovan-mortgage-settlement_n_1354260.html?ref=mostpopular