The Post reports that President Bush is requesting another $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Aghanistan. This brings the total for the year to approximately $200 billion.
It would be helpful if these numbers were put in a context that would make them meaningful to readers. This spending accounts for approximately 6.7 percent of the federal budget. Alternatively, the wars cost every person in the country approximately $670 a year in taxes.
Or, to use another measure, the cost of the war is twenty times the additional funding proposed in a Senate bill to extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The additional $50 billion requested by President Bush is five times the size of the additional funding in the Senate bill.
--Dean Baker
Posted at
August 28, 2007
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