The war has cost more than 500 billion over the last 5 years: 1/4 of the Social Security Trust Fund

[Hannah Bell]

which we supposedly can't afford to pay back over the 30-odd years of the boomers' retirements.

Bunch of baloney.

[snot]

1. source? necessary in order to propagate.

[TahitiNut]

2. Those dollar amounts are fairly common knowledge.

While the cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is often cited as greater, $500 billion is a lowball with which no rational person would argue. The combined balance of the Social Security Trust Fund at the end of fiscal year 2007 (September 30, 2007) was $2,180,619,000,000 ... or about $2.2 trillion. The balance at the end of the calendar year 2007 was $2,238,500,000,000, an increase of nearly $58 billion in three months.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fyOps.html
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a3.html



The most recent data indicates that the investment holdings (not including cash holdings) of the combined trust funds was $2,360,376,717,000 at the end of June 2008. The weighted interest rate on those investments (in federal bonds) was 4.967% ... not bad, actually.

[ColbertWatcher]

5. Nice, this will make it easy to argue with the sheeple. Thank you! n/t

[Hannah Bell]

4. a documentation for the war cost, in addition to tahiti nut's of SS TF.

http://zfacts.com/p/447.html

[MichiganVote]

3. But John McCain knows how to win wars! Only take a hundred years or so folks.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. How many years does it take John McCain to win a war?

100.

75 of them so he can remember where he is and what he was talking about, 24 years for him to remind everyone he was a POW, and one year for someone else to clean up the GOP's mess.

[Hannah Bell]

7. kick

[Supersedeas]

8. something AARP and like groups should be very aware of