{"id":34513,"date":"2017-03-23T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T21:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/my-turn-trumps-budget-hurts-alaskans\/"},"modified":"2017-03-23T14:00:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T21:00:10","slug":"my-turn-trumps-budget-hurts-alaskans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/my-turn-trumps-budget-hurts-alaskans\/","title":{"rendered":"My Turn: Trump\u2019s budget hurts Alaskans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White House has come out with its budget blueprint. If you live in a rural area or are poor, you are, to use Mr. Trump\u2019s words, a loser. Say goodbye to infrastructure development, a healthy environment, or emergency services, all surrendered so Mr. Trump and company can promote war.<\/span><\/p>\n

Introducing the budget, White House Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney said \u201cmake no mistake about it, this is a hard-power budget, not a soft-power budget.\u201d This is clearly a budget that limits us to war as the only solution to any international issue, militarizing American foreign policy at the expense of domestic programs. As Mr. Trump likes to say, \u201cWe have to start winning wars again.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are we Alaskans expected to sacrifice at the altar of war? Let\u2019s take a look at the immediate financial costs. Complete elimination of the following programs, which the White House has said cannot be justified, with Alaska\u2019s share in parentheses:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Denali Commission ($19,000,000)<\/p>\n

\u2022 FAA Essential Air Service ($13,000,000)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($8,635,540)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Americorps (680 volunteers, $4,700,000 in direct federal aid, $2,480,000 in leveraged funding)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Alaska Sea Grant program ($1,500,000)<\/p>\n

\u2022 National Endowment for the Humanities ($930,000)<\/p>\n

\u2022 USDOL Job Corps \u2014 Close the Job Corps Center Campus in Palmer, which provides training for about 226 at-risk Alaskan youth annually<\/p>\n

\u2022 Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery\/Pacific Salmon Treaty Program ($8,075,000)<\/p>\n

Significant cuts to the following agencies:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Department of State (28 percent cut; $2,698,889)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Environmental Protection Agency (31 percent cut; $23,629,000 to ADEC, $25,784,000 to ANTHC)<\/p>\n

\u2022 NOAA (17 percent cut; $3,342,847) \u2014 Reduced mapping, fisheries research, coastal village funding.<\/p>\n

\u2022 U.S. Coast Guard (14 percent cut) \u2014 Reduced search and rescue and boating safety programs.<\/p>\n

\u2022 FEMA state grants ($667 million cut) \u2014 Say goodbye to earthquake and tsunami warnings.<\/p>\n

\u2022 National Institute of Health (19 percent) \u2014 Cuts to rural health programs and medical research.<\/p>\n

In order to fund Trump\u2019s war machine, Alaska is being asked to give up clean air, clean water, job training, education, art, commercial fisheries, air travel, and search and rescue. And that\u2019s before adding the social costs of sending our children to war.<\/p>\n

We already have the best-funded military in the world, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all money spent globally on defense. We spend more on making war than the next 12 largest military spenders combined, and most of those big spenders are our allies.<\/p>\n

Previous periods of sharp defense budget increases \u2014 like in 1981 when Ronald Reagan oversaw a comparable increase in spending \u2014 actually created less efficiency in military spending as the Department of Defense went on a spending spree. It is much wiser to give the Pentagon less money and force them to set better priorities. When you throw more money at a bureaucracy, waste and inefficiency follows.<\/p>\n

The current administration\u2019s reliance on military force for foreign policy is creating a dismal swamp that will strain and overextend our military in the long run, requiring ever-increasing additional military spending. As Marine General Jim Mattis noted in 2013, \u201cIf you don\u2019t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a cost-benefit ratio,\u201d the then-commander of U.S. Central Command said. \u201cThe more that we put into the State Department\u2019s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of an apparent American withdrawal from the international scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Excessive long-term military spending and costly foreign adventures have been the downfall of many great powers throughout history, including the Soviet Union. The United States\u2019 victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War was in no small part due to our relative overall restraint in military spending and our long-term commitment to non-military tools of foreign policy \u2014 a lesson that someone should tweet to Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2022 Craig Wilson lives in Juneau.<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House has come out with its budget blueprint. If you live in a rural area or are poor, you are, to use Mr. Trump\u2019s words, a loser. Say goodbye to infrastructure development, a healthy environment, or emergency services, all surrendered so Mr. Trump and company can promote war. Introducing the budget, White House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34513"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}