WSW EDITORIAL

In an effort to keep at least one campaign promise, President Carter is seeking to balance the budget for the 1981 fiscal year, beginning October 1. To this end; he proposed budget cuts of $13 billion on March 14, and recently increased the proposed cuts to $15.4

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Votl, no. 11

billion. So far, however, the administration has been vague as to the list of programs to be cut back or cancelled so that a balanced budget can be achieved. It is known, however, that state and local governments would lose $2.2 billion in revenue-sharing and

CONTENTS

Letters.....

Commentary

Three Mile Island: One Year Later.. Grr..Reveuses Stun France.

Groups..

Network..

Features

Clio's Musings

Wages for Housework..

Sonia Johnson: Spiritual Blackmail.

Classified Ads.

The Transsexual Phenomenon..

6-7

Find It Fastest.

Short Story.....

8-9

Strong Wimmin: Part IV....

What's Happening.

Masthead by Gene Epstein and Linda Jane

Cover Photo by Janet Century

What She Wants

10, 12

10.

....

..back cover

14-15

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antirecession funds, and energy programs would lose $1.8 billion, including $110 million for research into coal and other fuels.

It takes no crystal ball, however, to forecast where the most dramatic cuts will come from those domestic and social service programs directly affecting women, children and the poor. For example, one of the areas in which the President was specific was a request for a reduction of more than $170 million to support children and women on Aid to Dependent Families. Cuts totalling $1.9 billion are also projected for such programs as food stamps, unemployment compensation, including CETA funds, and federal pensions. While budget increases have been requested in some human service areas, they are for the most part inadequate: funding for education, for instance, is projected at only 2/3 the rate of inflation; the amount requested for civil rights enforcement, including sex discrimination cases, will require a reduction of existing personnel.

On the other hand, the military portion of the proposed budget is projected at $150.5 billion, 24 percent of the total (the percentage is actually higher when it is considered that 2/3 of the interest on the national debt comes from previous military spending). Carter's drive to develop first strike nuclear weapons will commit this country to military expenditures of in excess of $1 trillion by 1985 for such innovations as the MX Mobile Missile and the "enhanced radiation" neutron bomb. The effects of this huge expenditure will be detrimental to every person in the U.S. Not only is military spending the major cause of inflation, but it is estimated that 11,600 jobs are forfeited for every billion spent on · military programs instead of human needs and civilian programs.

By statute, budget resolutions are due by May 15, and countless lobbyists are now battling to save funding-for-their-own clients and shift spending-cuts on to someone else with less clout. Those without a powerful voice-women, children, the poor-are most vulnerable to losing or having reduced the few benefits they have. The budget resolutions are only guidelines; congressional committees can and often do vote more funds for specific programs than are called for in the resolutions. The jockeying for money will go on until summer, when appropriations are voted. The congressional mood, however, will undoubtedly be more sympathetic to the Pentagon than to the powerless, especially during the current militaristic hysteria.

The goal of a balanced budget is an honorable one, but as its accomplishment is now proposed by the Carter administration, the means do not justify the end. It has been stated so often that this country must reorder its priorities and value people over guns that it has become almost a cliche, but obviously, from the looks of the proposed 1981 budget, that truth has not been learned. The proposed budget cuts are shortsighted in the extreme; the effects of inadequate funding for such important areas as education, alternate energy research and eradication of discrimination may not be apparent for many years, but they are inevitable. What this bodes for the future is frightening indeed.

Erratum

-Mary Walsh

WSW regrets that Part III of Strong Wimmin (March, 1980) was inadvertently misarranged. The nine paragraphs beginning "The Olympian pantheon", now in column 3 on page 10 and column 2 on page 12, should have followed the words "and very pleasing to the eye" in column 2 on page 10. The last three paragraphs of the article should have followed directly after the Sappho poem on page 10.

April, 1980/What She Wants/Page 1