Money

This is the moment where you get WILDLY excited about using money to create social change! To begin with, here is the MAU Follow the Money principle: Every dollar spent, each tax dollar collected is a vote. It’s time to get educated about what we’re funding with our budgets—from personal products to the government policies our tax dollars support. If anyone knows how to shop, balance a budget and make sure everyone eats, it’s mothers. Make sure your dollars vote for a healthy future for all children.

Here is a breakdown of what our tax dollars are currently supporting and not supporting (this is before YOU got into the act):

The proposed 2009 US budget request for military spending—now referred to as “security” spending—is projected to be 58% of the discretionary budget*, or $606.7 billion. To put this in perspective, this number is bigger than all other military budgets in the world combined. We are not making this up.

The good news is that Mothers are not alone in seeing a need for a shift of allocation, in fact Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in 2007, “What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security: diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development … We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military … ”  It’s now our job mothers to build the political will necessary for Congress to shift 15% of the US defense budget into programs that nurture & protect the lives of children—all without weakening the strength of the US military.

(*The discretionary budget refers to the part of the federal budget proposed by the President, then debated and decided on by Congress each year. The part of the budget constitutes more than one-third of total federal spending. The remainder of the federal budget is called “mandatory spending”. Fiscal Year 2009 will run from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009.)