Eighty-Two billion Dollars ($82,000,000,000) [View All]

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Eighty-Two Billion Dollars ($82,000,000,000)
Supplemental Spending Bill: Refuting Common Arguments
by Jeff Leys

"Democrats are hopeful we are successful" in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Steny Hoyer, House Democratic whip, explaining his plan to support Mr Bush’s request for extra funding.
"This administration has been extraordinarily wrong" in its cost estimates, he said, but the money proposed as an addition to the annual budget was needed to help stabilise and develop Iraq. The supplemental funds are to be used to cover the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as tsunami relief and some homeland security, intelligence and foreign operations programmes. (Financial Times)

A Vote for the Supplemental Spending Bill Endorses the Budgetary Schemes Used to Fund the War

President Bush has not been honest with the people of the United States nor with Congress concerning the true costs of the war in and occupation of Iraq. This supplemental spending bill is for Fiscal Year 2005, which is already almost 5 months old. Funding for Fiscal Year 2005 should have been included in the budget submitted last year. Indeed, at the time that the FY 2005 budget was submitted to Congress, the Bush Administration was acknowledging that it would seek further funding for the war in Iraq through a supplemental spending request.

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A Vote for the Supplemental Spending Bill Diverts Necessary Funds from the Common Good in the United States

The cost to the Common Good in the U.S. because of the Iraq war and occupation is high. The funds being diverted to the war in and occupation of Iraq could instead be utilized to fund the Common Good in the United States. Universal health care, fully funded public education at all levels, jobs training programs for employment paying a living wage, public transportation and other programs are being woefully under funded or entirely ignored in the current debate.


http://www.selvesandothers.org/article8682.html


As President Eisenhower said:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."