$1 Trillion Dollars - You get to pay $10,000 for this war: Conyers' blog

[babylonsister]

http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000408.htm

$1 Trillion Dollars - You get to pay $10,000 for this war

Bob Herbert in his op-ed piece in the New York Times today highlights a study that I have been looking into by Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel-prize winning economist and Linda Bilmes, a colleague from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The research by Stiglitz and Bilmes reveals that the total cost of the war will be more than $1 trillion and possibly more than $2 trillion. The article is part of the New York Times pay service, so I will excerpt a couple passages.

Mr. Stiglitz said that about $560 billion, which is a little more than half of the study's conservative estimate of the cost of the war, would have been enough to "fix" Social Security for the next 75 years. If one were thinking in terms of promoting democracy in the Middle East, he said, the money being spent on the war would have been enough to finance a "mega-mega-mega-Marshall Plan," which would have been "so much more" effective than the invasion of Iraq.

Between one and two trillion dollars! It's hard to imagine that this Administration would ever commit these funds to places where it is really needed. Where is this money going to be when Bush decides (if ever) to aid New Orleans reconstruction? Or to make health care available to those without insurance.

Or consider the war's cost to you directly. $10,000 is the cost to each household for the first $1 trillion. Is your family ready to pay $10,000 for Bush's war?

[enid602]

1. trillion

A trillion here and there is chicken feed for these folks. I do, however feel sorry for well-meaning Republicans who have traditionally believed that a frugal government is necessary to promote economic growth.