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National Endorsers:
(for local participants see below)
for more information:
Dear Friend:
Congress and the President have begun to wake up on budget priorities! Some of the worst Republican student-aid cuts were reversed in October by Congress, and the President last week proposed the first significant increases in education and housing spending in over a decade!
However, politicians are not planning to get get the money from parts of the budget where there is plenty of fat to cut, such as $265 billion Department of Defense budget. Instead, they are planning raids on entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security -- pitting the interests of young and homeless people against elderly folks. And over a five-year period, President Clinton has planned increases in military spending than are much larger than proposed education, housing, and environmental programs combined.
There is no need for this. The United States, as the richest country in the world, has the resources to provide basic income security to those of us facing harsh economic trends. If we cut $125 billion from corporate welfare, cut $75 billion from military forces we no longer need, and tax the windfall a few are receiving from corporate downsizing, our government would run a surplus. Yet the rejoinder we hear time and time again is that we need to make deep cuts in social programs in order to "balance the budget."
For this reason, the Center for Campus Organizing, the Student Peace Action Network, the US Student Association, Youth for Democratic Action, 20/20 Vision, Women's Action for New Directions, the Campaign for New Priorities, and over 20 grassroots peace and justice groups on college campuses have joined together to circulate a "Petition for New Priorities."
We ask you to join in this effort. All it takes is a group with 5 or six people to stand in a public place for two or three days near lunchtime to collect signatures. Then, you can use the support you find to generate some publicity which will put heat on local politicians to support balanced budget priorities. For example, you can ask your local Congressperson to sign the petition; if he or she refuses then you can raise public awareness about how they have sold out to corporate interests.
Signatures will be sent to Washington, DC around the 15th of March, and again around tax day (April 15), for media events that will protest the failure of national leaders to consider the priorities of young people in drafting a budget.
List of Participating Schools (as of 2/15/96)
Petition for New Priorities | 24 Lie$ Flyer Series |
