The Des Moines Business Record has a great piece on the efforts of Iowans for Sensible Priorities and their supporters to bring about budgetary change in Washington and to spread the message for reform across the state. Folks like Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie, Congressman Leonard Boswell, and Senator Tom Harkin are all supporters who are helping to spread the message — and hopefully getting the word out in DC. I think with enough enthusiasm from Iowans, we could even get Tom Harkin to become the necessary sponsor of the Common Sense Budget Act in the Senate.
And to think, in DC the big message tool in meetings were these simple little pens.
For more on ISP, check out this past post or visit their website.
I saw the ISP car at Dahl’s yesterday. They’ve painted a pie chart of federal spending on it, and have a giant semicircle thrown on top of the car to represent the Pentagon chunk. It was sweet. :)
They really souped the thing up. I believe you can even email them and ask for a day when you can drive it and make people aware of their organization and its goals.
Sure, it’s cool, even though the pie chart is wrong. It show’s the Pentagon budget taking up half of the overall budget. Last time I checked 500 billion was not half of 2.4 trillion.
And why not take a more accurate look at spending, rather than by dollar how about as a percentage of GDP.
Good point, Kevin. They could probably build a strong case even without misleading numbers. This claims to be a non-partisan group but it’s Ben Cohen’s circus. I’m in favor of taking a serious look at military spending, but not so that it can be reallocated to the CIETCs of the world. There is waste everywhere — you ever look at Broadlawns’ spending? — but this is an opportunity to turn it into an anti-Bush, anti-Republican campaign.
You also have to realize that the numbers the Pentagon puts out concerning the “military budget” are smoke & mirrors, anyhow. The article written by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker puts it well:
I don’t think the numbers they use are misleading, its just the way they’re portrayed that can make them look confusing. While the national group is Ben Cohen’s creation, it isn’t directly partisan, at least here at the state level. I know that Peggy Huppert has made overtures to Republicans and other conservatives in the state, but as is the case with groups and interests that want to reform Pentagon and defense spending, they’re viewed as anti-security and anti-defense and anti-war (so they won’t publicly endorse or sign on) when all the group really want to do is share the wealth and get rid of outdated Cold War technology (as outlined in the Korb Report which is linked to on their website). Ben Cohen’s wacky ideas may make the group look like a circus but it gets the attention of the ordinary folks and then they ask the questions to the representatives. It is a real grassroots approach that is working.
Oh, and Matt, good point about the smoke and mirrors of the Pentagon.
But Pentagon spending is half of discretionary spending, and if we’re talking about Congressional priorities, then nondiscretionary spending is extremely extremely hard to change. Unless, of course, we’re talking about radical changes in social security or medicare.