Portsmouth Herald

 Ice cream tycoon talks budget cuts

    PORTSMOUTH - Ben Cohen may be known as one half of the fun-loving, hippie duo that created Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, but he was in the city Tuesday to talk about a more serious issue: the federal budget.

Cohen's nonprofit organization, Business Leaders for Sensible Practices, has started a public education campaign called PrioritiesNH. The nonpartisan group aims to get grassroots support for its initiative to shift federal dollars away from military spending to things such as education, health care, job training and environmental protection.

About 100 people showed up to the PrioritiesNH kick-off event at The Pearl, which featured carnival games like the "budget wheel of fortune" and a pink pig truck that played rap music about uninsured children.

"We live in the richest country in the world, yet our schools are under-funded, our health care system is a mess," Cohen said.

He said public polls show taxpayers support reallocating the federal budget, but since it's not "top of mind," politicians don't feel they need to address it.

And that's where Cohen's group comes in. Priorities has set up campaigns here and in Iowa with the goal of growing a constituency whose priority is to change how tax dollars are spent.

Cohen explained the essence of the campaign by using a bar graph of plastic Oreo cookies. By moving six Oreos (or $60 billion) from the Pentagon's $442 billion budget, the government could fund public schools, insure children, help reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and put a dent in the federal deficit.

Cohen said the Pentagon was targeted because it makes up 50 percent of the federal budget. He stressed that the cut would not impact the war in Iraq and Afghanistan because it's funded separately.

This reallocation is backed by legislation introduced in Congress in March and a team of military officials who have worked with Cohen, including Lawrence Korb, who also spoke at The Pearl.

Korb, a former defense department administrator under Ronald Reagan, rattled off a number of examples of "wasteful Pentagon spending," most of which were Cold War weaponry that he said is now obsolete.

"I haven't cut a single Army troop, or Marine, or National Guardsmen," Korb said. "We're talking about stuff that deals with threats from a bygone era."

After the event, Rob Kanzer said he agreed with Cohen and thought he offered some great ideas. But Kanzer said he wasn't sure how the ideas would become reality.