Iowa Telegraph Herald

 

Crusade aims to cut defense spending

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities say U.S. military budget defies common sense

   
By Mary Rae Bragg       
   

Warren Langley says his experience tells him America's spending on defense does not make good business sense.

A former chief operating officer of the Pacific Exchange in San Francisco and of Hull Trading in Chicago, Langley now serves on the national board of directors of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the non-profit group founded by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream.

Langley was in Dubuque Friday, on the final leg of his first visit to Iowa. There will be many more visits to the state in coming years, Langley promised, as long as Iowa continues to host presidential caucuses.

His goal is to get Iowans to urge the candidates to support a bill introduced in Congress in March that would reduce spending on obsolete Cold War-era weapons. The reduction in defense spending that his group seeks does not affect the money that American troops need in Iraq, he said.

The Common Sense Budget Act stipulates that $60 billion of the Pentagon budget be reallocated to meeting funding needs in the areas of education, health care, job training, energy independence and humanitarian foreign aid.

Langley said he is starting his campaign in Iowa, then will go to New Hampshire, spending time in those states through the 2012 presidential election, "Because we know this is a marathon, not a sprint."

Peggy Huppert, director of Iowans for Sensible Priorities who accompanied Langley on his trip in Iowa, said her group's thrust is non-political, but causes a visceral response from both major parties.

Any time defense spending is questioned, leaders of whichever party is in control have taken exception, she said. Republicans supporting the Bush administration are no more defensive on the issue than were Democrats supporting Al Gore's presidential campaign during the Clinton years, she said.

But a poll conducted for Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities in January among 607 likely voters in Iowa showed that the state's voters want defense spending reduced, she said.

The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, shows 58 percent of respondents saying they would most likely vote for the candidates running for federal office who favor a 15 percent reduction in defense spending, with the accompanying shift to the other priorities. Eleven percent said they were not sure and 31 percent would support a candidate opposed to the reduction.

A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy who spent 15 years in Air Force research and development before leaving the service in 1980, Langley said he does not consider himself a political person.

Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Langley said he, like many Americans, felt it was necessary for the United States to go into Afghanistan in pursuit of the people who orchestrated the attacks. But he became disturbed a year later by the mounting "drum beat" for invading Iraq.

"I think it's been really tough for people in this country to separate support for the troops from opposition to the war," Langley said.