Budgets

All the coverage about budgets this week reminds me of that popular saying from years ago: “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”

On the same day the President’s 2011 budget is released, I read about the budget crunch in Fairfax Country, Virginia. To fill a $176 million budget deficit, talk of eliminating foreign language program, full day kindergarten, the entire elementary school band and string program. From a sixth grader we’re told, “If these programs go, then we can’t play the music coming from our hearts.”

And what about the “President’s budget?” Let’s get real. This is the country’s budget – the budget that we all have taken a hand in creating over many, many years.

Frank Rich’s recent column included an observation by Alan Brinkley … that we are entering the fourth decade where Congress and therefore government as a whole — has failed to deal with any major national problem, from infrastructure to education.

The 2011 budget carries the baggage of what Rich referred to in his column as a leadership deficit. One of the biggest areas of this leadership deficit has been in moving our country to a clean energy future.

In the Washington Post coverage, we see a tiny notation that “other” spending includes $3 billion for “potential disaster costs.” That could easily be a drop in the bucket when you consider that the costs of the record breaking hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis totaled $57.3 billion in damages.

The cost of inaction on global warming will only get higher the longer we wait – as high as 3.6 percent of GDP, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Concerned about the national debt? Add to it $1.9 trillion annually by the end of the century if we continue to ignore the science.

Thankfully, President Obama is trying to move the country toward the transition we must make, by including $2.4 billion for the clean tech sector. While commendable, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the taxpayer subsidies oil companies still horde. Thankfully, the President has called for the elimination of tax breaks big oil continues to be entitled to – $36.5 billion from 2011 to 2020, according to Dan Weiss, at the Center for American Progress. That accounts for half of what the big five oil companies made in 2009 profits.

President Obama also included deficit-neutral revenue from a federal program to cap the pollution that causes global warming. Proceeds from this program would help “vulnerable families, communities and businesses”… and focus on “adapting to the impacts of climate change” both here in the U.S. and in developing countries.

Support for helping those least responsible for global warming is long overdue (and why the commitment to provide $10 billion in funds in the Copenhagen Accord is so significant). While concern for global warming moves further off the radar screen for Americans, the problem only gets worse. According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 325 million people are adversely affected by climate change each year and 300,000 die. In this century, hundreds of millions of people are likely to be displaced because of sea level rise.

Connect this with the reference in the release of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review this week that climate change will “exacerbate future conflicts” and the need for action couldn’t be clearer.

No one – no one would suggest that we should ignore adequate defense for our country and our troops abroad. And yet, on the top of the budget pile is $895 billion for defense. I see that number and I’m reminded of a sign in the office of Rev. John W. Wimberly, of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington DC: “Budgets are Moral Documents.”

For a church that helps feed thousands of homeless people at Miriam’s Kitchen, is involved with the Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light to save energy, and respond to climate change, building a health clinic in Ethopia, and much more, the sign is a reminder of what their work is all about. It should be a reminder to all of us. Budgets are Moral Documents.