George W. Bush is up to his old tricks.
Last night he warned us that the economy is in danger and said there's no time to examine the $700 billion bailout's fine print. We have to act immediately.
Haven't we heard this before?
In 2001 President Bush used the same argument to get a $1.3 trillion tax cut, 50% of which went to the richest 1 % of income earners averaging $1.5 million a year.
He got his tax cuts, the economy tanked, inequality soared and our $5.2 trillion surplus evaporated.
He used the same line about immediate danger from Iraq in 2002 and 2003.
He got his war, but no weapons of mass destruction or nuclear capacity were found. There were no flowers for liberators or oil revenues to pay for the war either. But Iran got a new ally next door. More than 4,000 U.S, soldiers lost their lives and more than 30,000 have been wounded. And we ended up with one heck of a bill... which is still growing.
He used the same line earlier this year to seek a new round of tax rebates. We've lost 660,000 jobs and the financial markets have collapsed.
There have been an awful lot of emergencies on GW's watch! And his solutions just haven't turned out as advertised, although the Haliburtons of the world have prospered from Bagdad to New Orleans.
We've had almost eight full years of the politics of fear.
Let's call the President's bluff and not act in haste.
Congress needs to take the time to make sure that its rescue plan protects taxpayers, homeowners, retirees and citizens. It needs to safeguard the long term economic interests of the nation and not simply those of the Wall Street buccaneers who gambled with the all of our money and lost!
Showing posts with label cost of the war in Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cost of the war in Iraq. Show all posts
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
President requests an additional $109 billion for war
President Bush has requested an additional $108 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have already cost $513 billion!
We are now spending $5,000 per second, $434 million every day, $12 million every month in an occupation that John McCain says could last for 100 years.
The $108 billion request is above and beyond the $515.4 billion allocated for national defense in 2009 which was was $35.9 billion or 7.5 percent more (5.4 percent adjusted for inflation) than the previous year.
It will increase the projected $410 billion deficit to more than $500 billion.
That's a lot of money that could be used to rebuild our nation's infrastructure, keep Social Security and Medicare solvent, invest in research and development, healthcare, alternative energy, education, conservation and homeland security.
The war in Iraq is costing this nation dearly- in lives, reputation and long-term prosperity.
We are now spending $5,000 per second, $434 million every day, $12 million every month in an occupation that John McCain says could last for 100 years.
The $108 billion request is above and beyond the $515.4 billion allocated for national defense in 2009 which was was $35.9 billion or 7.5 percent more (5.4 percent adjusted for inflation) than the previous year.
It will increase the projected $410 billion deficit to more than $500 billion.
That's a lot of money that could be used to rebuild our nation's infrastructure, keep Social Security and Medicare solvent, invest in research and development, healthcare, alternative energy, education, conservation and homeland security.
The war in Iraq is costing this nation dearly- in lives, reputation and long-term prosperity.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Who is supporting the troops now?
The Bush administration's cynical use of the American military personnel was exposed by the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed, the failure of the VA to provide adequate medical treatment to thousands of returning veterans and the widespread use of Stop-loss that sends soldiers (over 81,000) who have fulfilled their military obligations back into combat against their will.
It turns out that returning vets are also having a hard to finding jobs, harder than for civilians of similar age and education.
The Washington Post reports that 18% of veterans recently back from tours of duty are unemployed. Twenty-five percent of those lucky enough to land a job earn less than $21,840 a year, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Is this what the Bush administration means by supporting our troops?
The Post article is attached.
It turns out that returning vets are also having a hard to finding jobs, harder than for civilians of similar age and education.
The Washington Post reports that 18% of veterans recently back from tours of duty are unemployed. Twenty-five percent of those lucky enough to land a job earn less than $21,840 a year, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Is this what the Bush administration means by supporting our troops?
The Post article is attached.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Patrick McIlheran's straw man
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's resident Republican Party apologist, Mr. Patrick McIlheran, castigates economists for saying that the war in Iraq has cost $3 trillion when it has ONLY cost $750 billion.
Two problems.
First, no one has said that the war has cost $3 trillion.
Economists like Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, a former President of the Council of Economic Advisers and VP of the World Bank, and Yale University's William D. Nordhaus have estimated that the war will eventually cost more than $2 trillion.
The U.S. Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed these projects.
By creating a straw man, Mr. McIlheran conveniently ignores the Bush administration's promises that the invasion and occupation would pay for itself.
“Iraq has oil,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Fortune magazine in 2002, discussing the potential cost of an Iraq invasion and how it would be met. “They have financial resources.”
Paul Wolfowitz, formerly Rumsfeld’s deputy, was even bolder when he testified before Congress as the war began that: “The oil revenues of that country could bring in between $50 (billion) and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction.”
The President’s men saw what they wanted to see — Iraq's 115 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the desert. They were blind to the reality: An oil industry decimated by more than a decade of economic sanctions, with technological decay and even geological deterioration of the fields already gnawing at it.
The rash predictions about Iraqi oil paying for the American invasion and occupation of Iraq were always suspect, part of the administration's marketing campaign to sell the war as a short and relatively cost-free operation.
Secondly, this war, the second most costly in U.S. history, is being fought with borrowed money.
McIlheran is a self proclaimed fiscal conservative. Yet he completely ignores that this is the first time in US history that we cut taxes while waging a war. Or that the resulting deficits will be passed on to future generations.
In 2006 the U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated that if we "stay the course in Iraq, McIlheran's preferred strategy, the deficit will increase by $313 billion over the next four years and $1.3 trillion over the next decade.
Even if we accept McIlheran's $750 billion figure, the cost is more than 7 times what the Bush administration said the war would cost. Or as New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, recently wrote we are spending $12.5 billion a month or $5000 every second. As Senator Everett Dirksen once said: "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money."
The problem, Patrick, is not that some are overestimating the long-term costs of the war, but that the Bush administration was as wrong about the cost of the war as it was about almost everything else in Iraq. On this your silence is deafening!
Two problems.
First, no one has said that the war has cost $3 trillion.
Economists like Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, a former President of the Council of Economic Advisers and VP of the World Bank, and Yale University's William D. Nordhaus have estimated that the war will eventually cost more than $2 trillion.
The U.S. Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed these projects.
By creating a straw man, Mr. McIlheran conveniently ignores the Bush administration's promises that the invasion and occupation would pay for itself.
“Iraq has oil,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Fortune magazine in 2002, discussing the potential cost of an Iraq invasion and how it would be met. “They have financial resources.”
Paul Wolfowitz, formerly Rumsfeld’s deputy, was even bolder when he testified before Congress as the war began that: “The oil revenues of that country could bring in between $50 (billion) and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction.”
The President’s men saw what they wanted to see — Iraq's 115 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the desert. They were blind to the reality: An oil industry decimated by more than a decade of economic sanctions, with technological decay and even geological deterioration of the fields already gnawing at it.
The rash predictions about Iraqi oil paying for the American invasion and occupation of Iraq were always suspect, part of the administration's marketing campaign to sell the war as a short and relatively cost-free operation.
Secondly, this war, the second most costly in U.S. history, is being fought with borrowed money.
McIlheran is a self proclaimed fiscal conservative. Yet he completely ignores that this is the first time in US history that we cut taxes while waging a war. Or that the resulting deficits will be passed on to future generations.
In 2006 the U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated that if we "stay the course in Iraq, McIlheran's preferred strategy, the deficit will increase by $313 billion over the next four years and $1.3 trillion over the next decade.
Even if we accept McIlheran's $750 billion figure, the cost is more than 7 times what the Bush administration said the war would cost. Or as New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, recently wrote we are spending $12.5 billion a month or $5000 every second. As Senator Everett Dirksen once said: "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money."
The problem, Patrick, is not that some are overestimating the long-term costs of the war, but that the Bush administration was as wrong about the cost of the war as it was about almost everything else in Iraq. On this your silence is deafening!
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