- BACKGROUND: Where do they stand on military and environmental issues?
- 1. NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Pres. Obama negotiated and the Senate ratified (71-29) the New START Treaty which reduces the number of deployed US and Russian nuclear weapons to 1,550 each, with an intrusive inspection regime to monitor compliance. Gov. Romney opposed this treaty as a "foreign policy blunder".
- 2. MILITARY SPENDING: Pres. Obama has proposed a basically level military budget. Gov. Romney is calling for a 25% increase* in military spending—not including the costs of wars.
- 3. IRAN: Pres. Obama has pledged not to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, using military force if necessary. Gov. Romney has repeatedly criticized Pres. Obama for not hewing closer to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's stand that Iran must be prevented from obtaining even the capability of making a nuclear weapon. However, in a Sept. 13th interview on ABC, Gov. Romney asserted three times that his own "red line" for triggering an attack on Iran was identical to the President's. But later, Romney's staff explained that he had not in fact altered his previous position.
- 4. CLIMATE CHANGE: Gov. Romney has stated that he's not sure about the causes of global warming, and that he intends to overturn many of the Obama Clean Air and Clean Water Act regulations, and the new EPA vehicle efficiency standards, and end the wind energy Production Tax Credits. He continues to support subsidies for the coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas industries.
ACTION: Copy and paste the text of this month's postcard into an email message and send it to your email contacts--as many as possible. Or, you could include a link to this website page in an email to your contacts. You could also print out copies of this Action Postcard and hand them out. This election is too important. We can't afford to be silent or too shy to share these important facts.
- If time permits, use the information in this card in a letter-to-the-editor of your local and regional newspapers.
* Note: Gov. Romney has stated that he would support a floor for annual Pentagon spending that was no less than four percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). At four percent, theNational Priorities Project calculates that in fiscal year 2013 this would equal a Pentagon budget of roughly $661 billion dollars. This is $136 billion more than the $525 billion requested by President Obama for the Pentagon's annual base budget in FY2013, an increase of over 25 percent.
Gov. Romney's four percent figure was calculated using economic projections from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is responsible for generating the president's annual budget proposal. Specifically, the GDP data came from OMB's "Budget of the U.S. Government for FY2013, Analytical Perspectives" Table 2-1, "Economic Assumptions"
Gov. Romney's four percent proposal can be found here.
Photo credit: Colorado Rio Grande Wild Turkey, 2011, Janet Hollingsworth, www.janethollingsworth.com
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