By Nicolas Davies, USLAW.
U.S. Labor Against the War welcomes the AFL-CIO’s analysis of President Trump’s proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2018, which details many of the proposal’s egregious cuts in vital social services and essential government activities.
http://www.aflcio.org/Press- Room/Press-Releases/AFL-CIO- Analysis-of-President-Donald- Trump-s-FY-2018-Budget
However, we are greatly disappointed that the analysis fails to make any mention that the $54 billion in cuts it analyses pay for a $54 billion increase in military spending for the year. This omission misses an important opportunity to spotlight the link between the bloated U.S. military budget and cuts in domestic programs This contradicts the AFL-CIO’s own Executive Council statement of August 2011, which declared that “the militarization of our foreign policy has proven a costly mistake. It is time to invest at home.”
http://uslaboragainstwar.org/ Article/74621/afl-cio- executive-council-the- militarization-of-our-foreign- policy-has-proven-to-be-a- costly-mistake.
U.S. Labor Against the War is dedicated to enhancing labor’s voice in opposition to U.S. militarized foreign policy. The U.S. already spends on its military more than the next eight country’s military budgets combined (including China, Russia, the UK, France, and Saudi Arabia). President Trump is a bellicose, impulsive leader who increases the threat of war. He is making clear his contempt for the needs and aspirations of working people.
U.S. Labor Against the War urges the AFL-CIO to link these two aspects of Trump’s presidency and help lead the labor movement into a full resistance to Trump’s full agenda.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
