Resolution to shift federal funds — File 203701

WHEREAS: President Trump has proposed to move $54 billion from social and environmental spending at home and abroad to military spending, bringing military spending to well over 60% of federal discretionary spending; and WHEREAS: Part of helping alleviate the refugee crisis should be ending, not escalating, wars that create refugees; and WHEREAS: President Trump himself has stated that the enormous military spending of the past 16 years has been disastrous and made us less safe, not safer; and WHEREAS: A fraction of the proposed military budget could provide enormous increases in jobs to rebuild our decaying infrastructure and to fund social and environmental programs at home, directly and indirectly benefitting millions of Americans; and WHEREAS: 121 retired U.S. generals have written a letter opposing cutting foreign aid; and WHEREAS: A United States that provided clean drinking water, schools, medicine and solar panels to needy people in other countries, would be more secure and face far less hostility around the world; and WHEREAS: Our environmental and social needs are desperate and urgent; and WHEREAS: The U.S. military is itself the greatest consumer of petroleum in the world; and WHEREAS: Economists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have documented that military spending is an economic drain rather than a jobs program; NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the Somerville Board of Aldermen urges the United States Congress to move our tax dollars in exactly the opposite direction proposed by the President -- from military spending to jobs that rebuild our infrastructure and for social and environmental needs.