Just for a sense of perspective, some quick and dirty research on wikipedia about our federal budget (2007):
The President's actual budget for 2007 totals $2.8 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2006. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:So we've lost as much money in Iraq as we spent on energy in a 2007. We've lost almost as much as we spent on science and technology, community and regional development, agriculture, foreign affairs, or natural resources and environment in 2007.
- $586.1 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
- $548.8 billion (+9.0%) - Defense
- $394.5 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
- $294.0 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare
- $276.4 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related
- $243.7 billion (+13.4%) - Interest on debt
- $89.9 billion (+1.3%) - Education and training
- $76.9 billion (+8.1%) - Transportation
- $72.6 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans' benefits
- $43.5 billion (+9.2%) - Administration of justice.
- $33.1 billion (+5.7%) - Natural resources and environment
- $32.5 billion (+15.4%) - Foreign affairs
- $27.0 billion (+3.7%) - Agriculture
- $26.8 billion (+28.7%) - Community and regional development
- $25.0 billion (+4.0%) - Science and technology
- $23.5 billion (+0.8%) - Energy
- $20.1 billion (+11.4%) - General government
And who does the investigative journalism to give us this story? The BBC.
2 comments:
All the lives needlessly lost because of this war is of course the most tragic aspect of Bush's Middle Eastern adventure, but it also makes your heart sink to think about all the money we're pouring into it. I heard on NPR a while back that the average American family has already contributed $1,600 in taxes to Iraq, and with commodity prices, energy, and personal debt levels where they are, it is a shame that we are being squeezed even further to help fund this awful war.
Maybe for Ruxton's challenge I should look into the US foreign debt a little bit. Of course, most of the expenses for our recklessness abroad will be born out years from now, passed on to the next generation. Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the war, all said and done, will cost this nation $3 trillion. Both in terms of the national debt, the opportunity costs, and the squeeze put on taxpayers, this is a travesty of epic proportions.
Thanks for tossing some numbers at us to put this in perspective. (And you are only chronicling the money that has been lost! - It would be interesting to see the complete war budget.)
Agreed, the loss of human live is the real tragedy.
It is just amazing to see the administration work so hard to block domestic programs such as child healthcare and to try to shoot down a new G.I. Bill as too expensive. Meanwhile, they have shown no interest in (if not actively blocked) investigations into widespread waste and fraud in Iraq.
Beyond money that was purely lost or stolen, Naomi Klein in "Shock Doctrine" goes into great detail of how project that are on the books as paid for were simply never completed or were completed in such a sub-standard way as to be unusable.
Really, the BBC article was not overstating the issue when they used the phrase war profiteering.
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