[Roy Fokker]

At the end of December, Congress approved $70 billion in bridge funding—a down payment to cover the gap between the beginning of the fiscal year and the passage of the actual appropriation bill—to keep financing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Legislators at the time were still chewing on the rest of President George W. Bush’s request for a fiscal year 2008 war budget of $196 billion. Should that funding be appropriated—and if recent history is any guide, it certainly will—then the total price tag for America’s present wars will rise to at least $822 billion, approximately 80 percent of which will be spent on Iraq. That surpasses the cost of the Vietnam War ($670 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars). And the Iraq portion dwarfs the $50 billion to $60 billion cost predicted at the outset of the war by Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget.

These runaway costs do not include a single dollar from the Pentagon’s annual operating budget, which in 2008 reached a whopping $481 billion. If the war were being accounted for based on a rational, transparent budget process instead of an opaque and politicized shell game, Americans would be painfully aware that we are now in the seventh year of what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has called a $1 trillion war.

How much money is $1 trillion? Enough to pay for the entire 1976 federal budget, adjusted for inflation. Enough to write a check for $37,500 to every Iraqi man, woman, and child. Enough to buy 169,492 Black Hawk helicopters, or 455 stealth bombers. Enough, in nominal terms, to pay for the entire federal government from 1789 to 1957.And it’s 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all.
To distract people from the real price tag of a two-front war, the president and Congress have used an unprecedented and fiscally irresponsible budgetary trick: a series of “emergency” supplemental spending bills totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. This scheme has allowed them not only to hide the costs of the conflicts but also to avoid painful budget choices while funneling billions of dollars in unvetted goodies to favored interest groups.

(emphasis mine)
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cheers,

[ingelein]

As a liberal I say healthcare not warfare.

http://pdamerica.org/articles/misc/2...19-42-misc.php

Healthcare NOT Warfare"

February 29, 2008


As PDA board member Norman Solomon pointed out in this article, “nearly one in six Americans has no health insurance, and tens of millions of others are woefully under-insured--while the war in Iraq continues to further skew the U.S. government's budget priorities.”

We say “Healthcare NOT Warfare” and ask you to join our campaign.

The time has come to redirect unnecessary and wasteful military spending to meet

[ingelein]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...tnH7gD90C0NEG3

White House cautions against restricting aid to Iraq

By ANNE FLAHERTY – 20 hours ago


The soaring cost of fuel prices and duration of the war have spurred the latest effort in Congress to get the Iraqis to pay more toward rebuilding efforts. Democrats and even some Republicans say American taxpayers are footing too much of the bill, including an expensive and painfully slow operation to train and equip Baghdad's security forces.

Meanwhile, the investigators estimate that Iraq's oil revenues will top $70 billion this year — twice what was initially expected. If oil prices stay high and the revenues produce a surplus, Iraq has promised to revise its annual budget and spend more.

With these kind of windfall oil profits , why are we bankrupting our nation to build THEIR infrastructure and fight THEIR war for them?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/...ef=mpstoryview

Report: Iraq windfall soars along with oil prices

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq's government is expected to reap a $70 billion windfall from soaring oil prices, about double the previous projections, the U.S. military's reconstruction watchdog reported Wednesday.

The issue has become a sore spot for some U.S. lawmakers as the war enters its sixth year, with both Republicans and Democrats raising complaints that U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for reconstruction work in the now-flush nation.