Between Guns And A Little Bread

LAST WEEK WAS a bad one for poor people and peace-loving people across the United States. President Ford wanted to increase the price of food stamps in an attempt to "save" the government $645 million. Ford's plan would have eliminated between two and three million people of the 8 per cent of Americans on food stamps. At 1975-76 fiscal years, issued last week, called for the largest rise in defense spending ever--up $8 billion over last year's budget to $92.8 billion--while cutting back on social programs such as Medical, Medicare, Social Security and Aid to Education.

Apparently Ford thinks either his advertising campaign to whip inflation now" is working or that poor people don't need to eat. The price of food continues to rise as the inflation rate remains as 12 per cent, and unemployment rises with over 7.5 million people jobless.

Yet, the administration continues to defend its higher defense spending. Last year, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger '50 decided not to emphasize the usual reason for increased spending, the Soviet threat, but instead based the higher costs on a theory of American global dominance to "build our peace-structure." This year the Soviet threat will probably be re-emphasized by the secretary of defense with the same notions of a worldwide "peace-structure." Schlesinger's defense for the Defense Department is based on the ridiculous assumption that the U.S. is maintaining worldwide military equilibrium and defending freedom.

Freedom has always been a relative term, rife with contradictions and particularly susceptible to abuse in meeting the immediate needs of the day. We should all remember that freedom is not just a patriotic term employed by nations to maintain their military superiority. Freedom includes the right to eat and to work at a meaningful job, the right to develop our minds to their full potential and the right to good health.

Last week Congress showed that its conception of freedom is much broader than the administration's when it rejected Ford's food stamp cuts, and rejected his regressive oil tax. Now it is up to Congress to cut back defense spending not to raise it, and to fight for more money for social security, education, and better medical care. For all Americans the choice is between a stone-age mentality of destruction and a civilized sense of constructive self-improvement. But for many poor Americans the choice may no longer be between guns and putter, but between guns and a little bread between technically more advanced weapons and survival.