The Oreo Mobile rolled into Charleston to stir up interest in how the federal government spends tax dollars.
The Oreo Mobile is a rolling pie chart used to demonstrate federal budget spending. Demonstrators use a 13-foot stack of giant oreo cookies to show how much money is placed in the Pentagon's pot. Aaron Rubin with the Oreo Mobile says, "The federal budget has numbers so big, no one can figure out what they are. We figured if we stack them up as oreo cookies, people would get it, and they do, you can see it makes sense, it explains the in comprehensible what the federal budget looks like. These oreos are so big they are equivalent to ten billion federal tax dollars a piece. 50 Oreos times ten billion dollars is 500 billion dollars and that's what we spend every year on the Pentagon." The group business leaders for sensible priorities says the government spends too much money on the Pentagon's budget, money that should be spent on education, health care, and energy. Rubin says, "With the money we're talking about, it's only 11-percent of the base Pentagon budget. You can accomplish miracles right here at home. You can rebuild every school in America, you can provide health care for millions of kids that don't have it, and reduce our use of oil by half by investing in energy and independence, so that's why we use cookies, it's a sweet message for south carolina, and the country."
Rubin says there is legislation pending in congress called the Common Sense Budget Act that would shift billions of dollars to education, health care, and energy without raising taxes.
Ben Cohen, the cofounder of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream designed the Oreo Mobile. Its on a six week tour of South Carolina, before heading cross country to Nevada.
