BANGOR, Maine — As Jo Comerford sees it, Americans can’t make good decisions about the future of their country without good information.
In her capacity as executive director of the National Priorities Project, Comerford’s mission is to provide just that.
Comerford will be the featured speaker at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine’s vegetarian potluck supper and general assembly meeting 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday in Suite 100 at 96 Harlow St.
And while she grew up in New York and lives in Massachusetts, Comerford is no stranger to Bangor, where her sister Lori Patterson is librarian at James F. Doughty School. Residents of Greater Bangor might remember Comerford from a Peace and Justice Center teach-in last fall during which she presented a slide show titled “End the Longest War: Afghanistan and Budget Priorities.”
During a brief interview Friday at the Bangor Daily News, Comerford discussed the work her organization does and why she believes it’s important.
“We are sort of unique in that we’re a federal budget research organization but our mandate is accessibility,” she said.
“What we try to do is get the numbers as local as possible, as small as possible, as close to home as possible, so that people really actually can feel it, feel the spending or feel the taxes,” she said.
The organization’s website and many publications track federal expenses and income in a variety of ways, in some cases broken down to the state and city levels.
Among the tools the organization has developed is a bar graph showing how each of your 2010 federal income tax dollars was spent. The expenditures reflect what the nation’s leadership has set as priorities.
For example, 27.4 cents out of every $1 was spent on the military, 21.5 cents on health and 13.8 cents on interest on debt. In contrast, 3.5 cents went toward education, two-thirds of a cent to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and a quarter of a cent each to the Head Start and Women Infants and Children nutrition program.
During her Bangor address Saturday, Comerford said she will compare and contrast two sharply different budget visions for the nation’s next decade.
One of them, “The Path to Prosperity,” was introduced by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., according to a report written by the project. It passed in the House and if passed in the Senate it would limit the size and scope of government and beef up private corporations’ role in job creation and economic growth.
The other, called “The People’s Budget,” was proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It focuses on job creation through such initiatives as the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Job Training and Workforce Development plans, strengthening the social safety net and reducing income inequality, the report states.
President Barack Obama’s framework, which the report also addresses, falls in between, Comerford said.
Though she acknowledges the federal budget dollar figures can be overwhelming, she hopes those who attend Saturday’s event come away with three things.
“One, that everybody’s important in a democracy, that everyone has a chance to have their voice heard and even that it’s a responsibility,” she said. “People are very powerful. In a democracy, individuals matter.”
Second, she hopes attendees “leave hungry for more information, that they perhaps get a little information they didn’t have, maybe have an ‘aha’ moment, maybe confirm something they weren’t sure about or maybe contribute a piece of information that no one else has.”
Comerford also wants her audience to leave eager to talk to others or to get involved by reaching out to others in the community and to their congressional delegation.