Josh Claybourn has the horrifying goods.
I think it's safe to say Bush straight up lied to the country when he said he'd act in the name of smaller government. Which means he lied to me.
UPDATE(8:50am)
A few sobering details of Bush's request for $87 billion in new funding:
Bush's $87 billion figure is the largest emergency spending request since the opening months of World War II, according to Pat Towell, a defense fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The emergency spending act that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the launching of the war in Afghanistan totaled $20 billion.To put it in perspective, Bush hopes to spend more in Iraq and Afghanistan than all 50 states say they need -- $78 billion -- to finance the budget shortfalls they anticipate for 2004.
The request is higher than the $74 billion the Defense Department plans to spend on all new weapons purchases next year, and higher than the $29.5 billion the Education Department hopes to spend on elementary and secondary education plus the $41.3 billion the administration plans to spend to defend the homeland.
With $166 billion spent or requested, Bush's war spending in 2003 and 2004 already exceeds the inflation-adjusted costs of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and the Persian Gulf War combined, according to a study by Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus. The Iraq war approaches the $191 billion inflation-adjusted cost of World War I.
He's lost me, fiscally.
UPDATE(6/18/2004 5:09pm)
Whom to Vote For?
Posted by Drizzten at September 09, 2003 12:24 AM
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The numbers presented aren't completely correct. Those figures are only the cost of the wars, not the rebuilding. Comparing the Iraq war AND rebuilding isn't a fair comparisson, especially considering what was spent on the Marshall plan, rebuilding Europe, etc after WWII.
Posted by: Stuart on September 9, 2003 06:56 PMI can't refute what you've claimed, nor am I interested in doing so. My point is Bush ran as a fiscal conservative and has gone 90º in another direction. Just as an example, to get my fiscal support and to avoid the huge deficits we now face, why doesn't he take an axe to the budgets of the Department of Education and Health and Human Services? He'd get the government out of two areas it doesn't belong and could use the money saved to pay for Iraq or the war on terror.
Instead, he just asks for more money.
Posted by: Drizz on September 9, 2003 08:11 PMOh, I don't disagree with you on those points, the involvement in Education could really be considered a violation of the 10th Amendment at that. And the (needed) money that goes to state boards of ed. could be cut from federal taxes and added to state taxes.
Posted by: Stu on September 10, 2003 10:30 AM