| ARLINGTON, MA - September 30 - Children, the poor, elderly and the mentally ill are the hardest hit by drastic cuts in state spending, concluded women legislators from around the country who gathered in Washington, DC, for the Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) national leadership conference that ended September 16.
Services that provide support for child care, job training, libraries, single parents, schools and the mentally ill have suffered billions of dollars in cuts across the country, depriving ordinary Americans of essential needs and leaving states scrambling to find dollars to prop up basic institutions.
In contrast, the Bush administration demanded a massive $15.7 billion dollars for nuclear weapons in its FY04 budget wish list, including $15 million for the so-called bunker-buster, a flawed atomic weapon intended to destroy deeply-buried targets that experts say will be ineffective. Among the administration's dangerous and unnecessary pork-barrel projects are low-yield nuclear weapons, a new plutonium trigger factory and other saber-rattling proposals that send an ominous message to other nations while breaking the international taboo that nuclear weapons should never be used.
"As women we understand that the needs of children, families and the elderly must be met with adequately-funded educational, medical and social services," said Pan Godchaux, the newly elected WAND president and a former Michigan legislator. "As elected officials, we are mandated to ensure that our state provides these services. Without education for our children, job training and opportunities for our young people, and proper health care for our elderly and mentally ill, our states and our country face a bleak future. It is time to stop wasting billions of our constituents' dollars on new and unnecessary weapons of war," Godchaux added. "We need these dollars not for weapons, but to stop the suffering and deprivation of our own people at home."
In an effort to avoid a flood of layoffs, states have frozen hiring and wages and opted not to replace workers who leave or retire. While struggling to maintain pupil-teacher ratios, stock libraries and offer fundamental medical services, states have had to collectively close around $200 billion worth of budget gaps (since FY2001), according to the National Priorities Project. This sum that could better have been spent hiring new teachers, purchasing school supplies and maintaining reliable first responder emergency equipment and personnel.
States Scrambling
"The American people, I think, would be absolutely apoplectic, and should be, to find out this administration is on the one hand holding people responsible for weapons of mass destruction but at the same time we are basically starting a new arms race," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), a speaker at the WAND conference.
The mental health picture is one of the bleakest, with 15 million Americans currently living with severe mental illnesses. State cuts have resulted in increased costs of as much as $6 billion to incarcerate 283,000 people with mental illnesses and $100 billion in lost productivity, according to research by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. In addition, states have cut Medicaid spending by restricting access to medications, forcing doctors and patients to compromise treatment decisions.
"We have been shifting spending for social services from the federals governments to the states," said Susan Shaer, WAND executive director. "We are the wealthiest nation in the world. It is unconscionable that we are forced to write a blank check for weapons we shouldn't even consider using while allowing suffering here at home."
Members of WAND and WiLL, a non-partisan network of women legislators, work to reduce violence and militarism and redirect excessive military resources toward unmet human and environmental needs. They are united in their opposition to the costly aggression in Iraq and to the continued and increased manufacture of weapons of mass destruction at home.
"War with Iraq, which is a first step in the plan for world dominance, will cost at least $100 billion," said WiLL president, Rep. Nan Grogan Orrock (D-GA). "Not only is this unimaginably expensive, but there is no end in sight and all our states are in the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression."
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