Dear Senator Leahy

Dear Senator Leahy,

I am writing to you out of concern for the Trump Administration’s proposed budget, particularly for the Department of Education. While Mr. Trump wants to shovel more resources into an already robust national defense program, I think we’re losing sight of what really matters.

NASA, for instance, has already been operating on 0.5% of the federal budget for the past five years and Trump wants to make even MORE cuts to this already underfunded program. There’s no doubt in my mind that if we gave NASA 2 or even 3% of the federal budget, we could do some pretty incredible things. Space exploration is something that’s always fascinated me and even the thought about colonizing another planet that could sustain life is pretty incredible, don’t you think? It would redefine our generation and allow us to traverse the stars. Isn’t that crazy? The fact that we have the materials, means and brain power to actually travel around the solar system and inhabit other planets but we can’t because of poor leadership and funding?

I’d much rather start occupying Mars and setting up stations than giving our military another new shiny tank they’ll never end up using.

Another thing that really disappoints me, as a college student from Vermont, is the cut for the Environmental Protection Agency. Why? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Our world is filled with such greed that our older generation, for the most part, does not care about the ramifications of pollution because they won’t live long enough to start seeing its effects. Well let me tell you, Mr. Leahy, that it is absolutely your responsibility to advocate for a transition to clean energy and remain out of the pockets of the oil industry, unlike some of your fellow congressmen. It’s short sighted and disgusting, completely at the expense of your children and your children’s children. At the rate we are going, humans will not be able to live on this planet in the next hundred years and the consequences could be irreversible.

So please, think about the future of this country and what you want it to look like. Do we really need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the national defense program? Really? THAT’s what we’re worried about? While children in our country are going hungry, the minimum wage is stagnant, decent paying jobs are disappearing and our environment is being poisoned, we need to bolster a program we hardly ever use and that ousts every other military opposition on the planet twofold? Please make the right decision here.

Thank you for reading and I hope you fight for me, the other Vermonters who voted you into office this past election, and all the lives you would be saving by opposing this budget.

Sincerely,

Rob Litchfield

Saint Michael’s College