Teacher Layoffs and War
Our government’s perverse definition of “national security” was on display again this summer. By large majorities, the U.S. Congress approved a so-called emergency appropriation of $33.5 billion to escalate the war in Afghanistan—adding to the more than $1 trillion that the United States has already spent waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Meanwhile, as schools faced the potential layoff of an estimated 300,000 teachers across the country, Congress dawdled until the second week in August, finally approving $10 billion to save the jobs of about half that number. The catch was that Congress “found” the money by cutting $12 billion in spending on food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)—a measure that the Food Research and Action Center says will hurt 40 million people, almost half of them children, when the cuts take effect in 2014. As Connecticut Rep.