Forbes

Dear members of Congress :

President George W. Bush may have unveiled his 2007 agenda last night, but you have the power of the purse.

So, instead of the usual whole lotta talk, a little fiddling around the edges and then essentially giving your rubber-stamp approval to Bush's budget, what if you actually spent our money in a way that makes fiscal (and moral) sense?

Try looking at the nation's budget from a business perspective and see it as a strategy for investment in America.

If you do this, you'll want to consider our immediate and long-term needs, to make sure our planning and short-term operations are balanced and sensible.

Then comes the hard part. You'll need to shake things up a bit, because it's likely your budget priorities will not square with what the president proposes to spend.

Take the discretionary budget, for example. Every year, about two-thirds of the federal budget is set in stone, earmarked to pay for mandatory spending like interest on the national debt and Medicare. But you can choose how to spend the rest. The president proposes to spend half of that discretionary money on the Pentagon. And that doesn't include funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which are submitted to you later as "supplemental requests" (direct deficit spending) and are rubber-stamped without even a whimper.

Given that Russia and China spend about $60 billion annually on defense (and the Axis of Evil spends about $12 billion) versus our Pentagon budget of well over $450 billion--and given all of America's investment options, from schools and hospitals to energy independence and job training--it's hard to understand, from an investment perspective, how this type of resource allocation makes any sense.

It's not what the American people want, that's for sure.

In a recently released survey by the University of Chicago, 74% of respondents said they favored more spending on education, and 66% want more government funding for health care.

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the organization I head, has a military advisory council that includes former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, President Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan and other retired military leaders. They all agree that we could trim $60 billion from the Pentagon budget without harming our ability to fight terrorists.

These savings could be realized mostly by eliminating obsolete Cold War weapons from the Pentagon budget.

So, look, now you've got $60 billion to invest! What should you do now? You can think about the broader security needs of our nation--beyond our legitimate defense needs.

Energy security is clearly key to the efficiency and performance of our future economy. So you should consider investing $10 billion per year over 10 years to cut America's dependence on oil in half.

Our economy also depends on educated workers. How about spending $10 billion per year over 12 years to rebuild and modernize America's public schools?

Abroad, it seems, we can do much more to fight terrorism by addressing the despair inherent in poverty. So, $15 billion per year to feed the 6 million kids who die of hunger-related disease across the world.

All this is outlined in the Common Sense Budget Act, introduced last year by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif. She includes additional funds for job training, medical research, children's health insurance and even deficit reduction.

This can be done without raising taxes and with serious long-term dividends for our country.

So, why don't you do it? It makes fiscal sense, it's the right thing to do, and, hey, even the people want it.

You're probably thinking that you'd like to do this, but it doesn't conform with reality in Washington, D.C., where wasteful multibillion-dollar high-tech weapons programs designed during the Cold War to defeat the Soviet Union are supported by both parties and pushed along by defense contractor lobbyists whose power is greater than a dessert fan like me can imagine.

Well, imagine this. Imagine standing up in front of your constituents and telling them that we need to maintain a strong military because the world is dangerous.

But we also must protect our broader national security interests. And that means investing in people and the economy--and giving all our kids the education, health care and skills they need to compete in the global economy.

President Dwight Eisenhower said that a country can never achieve absolute security, but it can easily bankrupt itself financially and morally by attempting to achieve that security through arms alone.

That's what our country is currently doing, and it's reflected in the budget President Bush delivered to you last night.

It's time for a change, and it's as simple as moving tax money from one pot, where it's being wasted, to another, where most Americans want it and where it'll do the most good.

Yours,
Ben