ANITA DANCS
Research director of the National Priorities Project, Dancs said today: “With the cost of the Iraq war at $315 billion through fiscal year 2006, taxpayers should reflect this tax day on where their money is going. That’s enough money to have built 18,000 elementary schools across the country and paid more than 900,000 teachers to have taught in them as long as the war has lasted. If we break that down to the taxpayer cost of just one city, say Houston, Texas, we are talking about $2.2 billion. If that money were spent locally instead of on the war, every graduating high school student in Houston could have a four-year college scholarship, Houston could double the number police officers, and there would still be hundreds of millions of dollars left for port security, parks, highways and public works projects.

“With tax day approaching, Americans should realize that for every income tax dollar they pay, 29 cents has gone to the military and only 4 cents for education and just one penny for all of our natural resources and the environment. Is this a sound investment in our country’s future?”

Dancs noted that the National Priorities Project’s web page “offers the local-taxpayer cost of the Iraq war along with examples of the magnitude of the amount (e.g. trade-offs) for your city, town, county or state. We also provide a breakdown of the median-income family’s tax payment for every state and for 200 towns, cities and counties across the country.”
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RUTH ROSEN
Rosen is professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, visiting professor of public policy and history at U.C. Berkeley and a senior fellow at the Longview Institute. In her most recent article, “Talking Taxes,” Rosen writes: “The Republican mantra — ‘shrink government and lower taxes’ — is fundamentally dishonest. They want us to believe that we are heavily taxed by an oppressive government and get nothing in return. The truth is, our quality of life is far safer and more convenient because of government ordinances, regulations and inspections.

“Follow me through a typical day and I’ll show you what I mean. Government services and regulations may seem invisible, but they’re everywhere you look.

“I wake up and brush my teeth with water whose purity is inspected by government agencies. I pour some cereal and milk into a bowl. No creepy crawlers appear; both are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Federally mandated labels on the cereal box and milk container, moreover, list the ingredients contained inside. …”
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CAROL MOORE
TIM GODSHALL,
Moore and Godshall are members of the Washington, D.C., Area War Tax Resistance. On Monday, April 17 — “Tax Day” — members of the group will donate over $3,000 of resisted tax money to peace and humanitarian organizations at IRS headquarters, 1111 Constitution Avenue, NW. The event will begin at noon. There will be similar events around the country; see the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee web page.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167