Cost of Iraq war, occupation threatens
support for domestic social programs

With Congress now debating federal budget priorities for the next fiscal year, it is imperative for social justice activists to urge policy-makers to balance pressing social needs against the ever-increasing costs of the war in Iraq.

Our colleagues in the Iraq peace advocacy movement have developed a measure of the actual costs of war in a number of areas of domestic human rights policy. Visit The war in Iraq costs the United States to see the cost of the conflict in Iraq on the United States and in local U.S. communities.

Now is the time to contact your members of Congress to urge them to reject a budget conference report that offers little help to millions of American families and especially hurts low-income families.

Action

Contact your members of Congress and urge them to reject the budget conference report. Visit our online Legislative Action Center to send an immediate message by e-mail or to obtain telephone numbers for your congressional representatives.

Message

• I urge you to oppose cuts to Medicaid and other entitlement programs. There are already more than 43 million Americans without health insurance. Cutting Medicaid could increase the number of uninsured or slash benefits.
   
• The final budget must not include deep cuts in important programs such as housing, child care, Head Start, veteran's medical care, law enforcement and juvenile justice programs.
   
• The final budget should require that tax cuts are offset (paid for) so they do not increase the deficit and lead to greater spending cuts, by retaining the Senate version's "pay-as-you-go" provisions that requires new spending or tax cuts must be offset by other cuts in spending or increases in revenue.
   
• The $138 billion in unpaid-for tax cuts in the House budget is enough to extend and make permanent all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthiest taxpayers. In 2009, assuming no tax cuts are allowed to expire, more than one-third (36 percent) of the 2001-2003 tax cuts go to the top one percent of taxpayers, the vast majority of whom are millionaires. The share going to people at the bottom one-fifth of the income ladder is a fraction of one percent (0.8 percent)
   
• The proposed budget requires that every new social service is OFFSET by a corresponding cut in another service. Additionally, the safety net will automatically deteriorate year after year so that portion of the budget shrinks and so does the number of people served. This will result in the loss of housing, severe restrictions in access to health care for families and children and a deepened economic divide in the U. S. between those who have access to resources and those who do not.

Background

Congress is now debating spending priorities for the FY05 budget, including matters in which UUSC has a special interest such as the pending reauthorization of welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), and aid to developing countries in Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Policy-makers are establishing priorities and making decisions on these important social justice issues against the backdrop of the ever-increasing costs of the war/occupation in Iraq. For a recent action alert concerning TANF authorization, visit Urge Congress to ensure government support for low-income families.

UUSC has been saddened by the violence, destruction and many lives lost as a result of the preemptive military strike against Iraq by the United States. From our first public statement in September 2002 on the situation, we have also voiced grave concern about the human and related costs of the war, which have, as we predicted, exacerbated already crippling levels of domestic poverty arising from insufficient state budgets and lower tax revenues.

This action alert was written based on information provided by the Washington-based Coalition for Human Needs, of which UUSC is a member.