$1.9 Trillion For Iraq War, Says CBO. What About Housing,

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Education And Health?

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=76702

Washington, Oct 24 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) released the following statement in response to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing the Iraq war could total $1.9 trillion through 2017.

“With the price of housing, education and health care continuing to rise, imagine what we could do if we had an extra $1.9 trillion to spend on these domestic priorities. Imagine how many students could receive a four-year, quality, college education. Imagine how many people could receive affordable, high-quality health care. Imagine how many homeless people would now have a home,” Kucinich said.

“Americans will spend almost $2 trillion in Iraq, but the longer term costs have included undermining America’s moral authority in the world, the separation of America from the nations and the peoples of the world, and the destruction of a domestic agenda which is being deferred while we borrow money from China to fight the war in Baghdad.”

Congress has appropriated $604 billion to date for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with about $412 billion spent in Iraq, according to the CBO. The CBO is a nonpartisan, in-house budget analyst for Congress.

CBO estimated that between 2008 and 2017, the wars could cost slightly more than $1 trillion, assuming overall troop strength is cut to 75,000 by 2013, according to Reuters News. The CBO also estimated that the interest costs alone could total more than $700 billion -- or nearly $8,000 for every individual in the country.

“The Democratic leadership in Congress has the power right now to tell the President: “We will not give you one more dime for this war. We do not have to keep funding this illegal and immoral war. It does not take a vote.”

“Each year this war is getting more and more costly – both in the amount of money spent and in the number of lives lost. There is no end in sight. The President’s current request of $196 billion for one year alone will only continue to keep us on a path of destruction and chaos.

“Where’s Congress? When will Congress stand up and end the war?” Kucinich concluded."


Military Budget

April 2006

http://www2.kucinich.us/issues/militarybudget.php

"This budget chooses war over health care, tax cuts over education, special interests over the needs of the nation, and rich over poor.

Few politicians have the courage to raise the obvious questions of the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about and which no one else seems to see. While we spend approximately what the rest of the world combined does on their military (with most of the big spending nations our allies!), we have tremendous waste. While many retired generals and admirals have stated that at least 15% waste could be cut from past military budgets, politicians seem to panic when the administration refers to the military budget as our "security" budget.

Militarism not only invites military solutions to diplomatic problems, but also destroys the economic dreams of countless families and ultimately sabotages our entire economy, as Chalmers Johnson points out in The Sorrows of Empire..."



Kucinich Says Cut Bloated Pentagon Budget To Fund Education

July 2003

http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0709-06.htm


"WASHINGTON - July 9 - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), today, took to the House floor during debate on an education bill to challenge the budget priorities of the Administration and the Republican majority in the Congress...

"Yesterday we passed a Defense spending bill that spends $8.9 billion on the National Missile Defense system that doesn't work, and today we will pass an education bill that, if fully funded, would work. But we won't fully fund it...

"Instead, we are spending too much -- $8.9 billion - for a missile defense program that won't work, and we're under-funding the education account.

"Americans need to know the trade-offs when we give tax cuts to millionaires and billions to programs that don't work. National Missile Defense doesn't work. Teachers do. They work for our children, they work for America, and they work for our future."

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1. Kick...thanks for the R. Kucinich has always been for reducing

payments to the MIC and spending the money on people. He has not put on a new and more popular face for this election.