The Oklahoma City  January 27,2003

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'Freedom Girls' Fight to Save U.S. Patriot Bond

    Efforts to kill U.S. Savings Bonds have spurred " The Freedom girls" into action. The "Girls" are Susan Dale, her 6-year-old daughter Anastasia Richardson and her mother,  Randi Johnson Dale, all of Tulsa.

    They say they are fighting to keep the government from eliminating sale of " Patriot Bonds," Series EE Savings Bonds designed to contribute to the fight against global terrorism.

    Rep. Ernest Istook is supporting a House version of the FY 2003 Treasury appropriations bill, which reportedly would stop all money for U.S. Savings Bond marketing, eliminate headquarters and field marketing, service and support functions. The House and Senate versions of the bill are in a conference committee. Rep Istook has been quoted as saying that Savings Bonds are an outdated production, a position Susan Dale disagrees with.

    "The U.S. economy and current conflicts in the Middle East are the most important issues facing our country, a year ago and today," she said. " This bond can help with both. What is outdated about supporting America and savings?"

    The three-generation effort to promote Patriot bonds started less than a week after then-Treasury Department Secretary Paul O'Neill announced the Patriot bonds' availability on December 11, 2001.

    The "Freedom Girls" sewed patriotic costumes and hosted "war bond" drives wherever they could. Dale said.

    She added that her family was driven to make the effort by their strong patriotism-and a little family history. In 1944, her mother, then 5, made the cover of Popular Photography magazine as a "patriotic cherub" promoting war bonds, the same age Anastasia was when The Freedom Girls began.

    In recent months the women have also created a $10 promotional poster, and Susan said they plan to use proceeds to create inspirational war bond postcards to mail to the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed overseas.

    "It's going to cost America a lot of money to continue to fight in Afghanistan or other places,"  Randi Dale said. "This bond will help us do that."

    Susan Dale said she's heard that the Treasury appropriations bill would exclude bond buyers without internet access, eliminate the purchase of paper Savings Bonds as gifts to child and close 37 field offices. As for the Patriot bond, any red, white and clue colors or historic emblems of patriotism would be removed.

    Susan Dale said the National Treasury Employees Union also opposes the drastic changes in Savings Bonds. Here is what the union newsletter said in response to Rep. Istook's comments:

    *U.S. Saving bonds are purchased from current income and liquid savings of our citizens. This type of savings constitutes sound financial policy precisely because it is anti-inflationary.

    *Borrowing from our own citizens via savings bonds is less disruptive in our economy than borrowing on open capital markets or from foreign investors.

*To encourage the average American to help the economy by "spending our way back to prosperity" is short-sighted, given the fact that the saving rate in America is already notoriously low. Saving for a rainy day with a security "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States" makes as much sense now as it did in World War II."