The war budget could buy a lot

By Jim Hightower

Published Thursday, March 13, 2008

President George W. Bush has now submitted his budget to Congress, and it can be summed up by this lopsided score: Domestic needs, zero. The Pentagon, $515 billion.

The budget slashes health care programs from Medicare to the medical needs of 9-11 rescue workers. It also makes drastic cuts in such other crucial efforts as the centers for disease control, low-income energy assistance and family literacy. But it piles half-a-trillion bucks in the Pentagon's vaults - and that does not include the money thrown down the hellhole of Iraq. Under Mr. Bush's accounting rules, war costs are off budget, charged to the credit card of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has calculated the total cost of just the first four years of the Iraq misadventure. Counting such deferred costs as interest on the war debt and long-term care for the wounded, the tab is $720 million per day.

The American Friends Service Committee has analyzed what else besides this misbegotten war America could buy with only one day's worth of the money we're spending there. For $720 million we could:

- Provide health coverage for 424,000 children.

- Build 84 brand new schools.

- Buy school lunches for 1.2 million needy kids.

- Provide 6,482 units of affordable housing.

- Pay for renewable-energy electricity in 1.3 million homes.

- Pay the annual salaries of 12,500 new classroom teachers.

- Put 35,000 students through a four-year state college.

Any of these could be had for just one day of war funding. This great country has the money to do what needs to be done - if only our "leaders" stop frittering it away on their ideological crusades.

You can reach Jim Hightower at www.jimhightower.com. His column is distributed by Minutemanmedia.org. The Messenger welcomes your comments on its editorial columns, which are printed to promote discussion.