Herbert: The 2 Trillion Nightmare

[fencesitter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin


***** The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war — not just the cost to taxpayers — will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

Both men talked about large opportunities lost because of the money poured into the war. “For a fraction of the cost of this war,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.”

Mr. Hormats mentioned Social Security and Medicare, saying that both could have been put “on a more sustainable basis.” And he cited the committee’s own calculations from last fall that showed that the money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers.

********
Said Mr. Stiglitz: “Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself ... By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion.”

Whole lot more.

(They're under the impression that government should help provide for it's citizens, silly men.)

[mwb970]

1. bush is killing America.

And there is nothing we can do about it! He and his thugs will never, ever be held accountable for even one of their many, many crimes.

I greatly fear that this is the end for us. The downward spiral is entrenched. The righties win! America is dead.

[mqbush]

2. We need to make the costs visualizable, as this article did.

How many mere weeks of war money could have repaired every deteriorating bridge in the US?
How many gigawatts worth of solar panels could we have, supplemented by how many gigawatts worth of windmills and/or tidal generators, etc? How many millions of barrels of oil every day would be saved, forever after?
An hour's worth of war money could have flooded Africa with condoms; a day's more, and anti-retroviral drugs could have been provided for every infected person there.
Any of you could think of lots of better uses of this fortune.

[natrat]

3. the costs are visual and getting more so-go to the grocery store

[Trajan]

4. This is a brilliant editorial ...

And it is something that Democrats have FAILED to capitalize with ....

I am not surprised that DUers have ignored this thread, being primarily interested in the Hari Kari of GD-Primaries ....

This IS the problem with the Bush War in Iraq .... He has purposely emptied the nation's treasury in his one successful endeavor: to remove wealth from the commons, and funnel it to his friends, Tax Free ....

It is the greatest theft in history: And Democrats cant seem to find the words to describe it ...

WTF is wrong with our party leadership ?

I have been counting lost college degrees since these assholes took office .....

[awoke_in_2003]

5. "WTF is wrong with our party leadership ?"

They are in on the scam, too.