To the editor:

Ohio Peace Council statement on debt deal cuts. Along strict partisan lines, the US House recently passed a draconian bill euphemistically called the “Limit, Save, and Grow Act,” which essentially is a declaration of war on America’s poor.

Proposed are massive cuts in countless domestic programs badly needed by low-income Americans for survival. Though unlikely to survive in the US Senate, this legislative assault upon America’s most vulnerable populations sets the sinister tone for negotiations on the nation’s debt ceiling.

Missing in those negotiations is the 5,000 pound gorilla in the room armed to its teeth.

Military spending by the USA exceeds that of the next 10 most militarized countries combined, and the combined military expenditures of the next 144 countries in the world. According to the War Resisters League, the US federal budget for 2024 includes $2.3 billion in military expenditures, 43% of the entire budget. And yet there are those who, even now as a national default looms heavily, demand more money for the Pentagon and less for the poor.

This is a moral outrage. Sharp and strategic cuts in the bloated Pentagon budget will do nothing to reduce national security, but a significant transfer of those wasted funds can and will go a long way to help solve the growing climate crisis and other critical societal needs. According to the National Priorities Project, a 10% cut in military spending could fund 1 million elementary school teachers for a year; over 822,000 registered nurses for a year; over 2 million Head Start slots for four years; and over 263 million households with solar electricity for a year.

In fact, a mere .05% transfer of Pentagon funds to residents in greater East Palestine could liberate hundreds of families desperately seeking escape from their toxic cages. After all, is not a stated function of the Pentagon to protect and save American lives? Hundreds, actually thousands, of fellow Americans in East Palestine are anxiously waiting for that protection right now.

Perhaps this is a good time for everyone to recall the wise words of US President Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made; every warship that is launched; every rocket fired signifies, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; those who are cold and not clothed.”

WERNER LANGE,

Newton Falls