On his webpage, www.johnmccain.com, McCain gives a Government Spending Plan which promises to “Lower Taxes and lead to Economic Prosperity”. In his plan McCain says he will, “work to ensure that money spent by Congress, and contributed by hardworking American taxpayers, is used wisely and prudently on legitimate national priorities, not squandered on wasteful pet projects and special interest earmarks.”
Indeed, he advocates that members of congress who are funding their “pet projects” have to report and explain these projects in full to the American Taxpayers. Only through this can we: lower the deficit, lower government spending which will lead to lower taxes, and of course, continue to finance the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
These are all fine things to advocate, but is it reasonable to expect that meeting these promises is in any way realistic?
Four years ago, when America was just beginning its war on Iraq Larry Lindey, Bush’s Chief Economic Advisor, said that in the end the war could end up costing $200 million dollars. In an attempt to avoid a public outcry the administration rushed to assure people that this was a “gross overestimate” of the potential costs.
Well, perhaps on account of the fact that the administration lacked the information they now have, it turns out $200million dollars may not have been as much of an overestimate as originally thought. Still, according to the Government Study released in 2006 we had only spent something on the order of $370 million.
But how accurate was the study?
Last year, Linda Blimes (Professor at the John Kennedy School of Law at Harvard University) and Joseph E. Stiglitz (Professor at Columbia University and 2001 Nobel Prize Recipient) co-authored a paper entitled “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict”. The paper factors in not only the costs of what we are spending on the ground in Iraq but also, “long-term costs, such as veterans' disability and healthcare payments.” It also includes the war’s/occupation’s impact on the economy. Adding in these factors raises the government’s estimates by almost 600% bringing the total costs to over $1 trillion dollars.
$1 trillion dollars! A number which is 600% higher then what the government is saying. And, equally as important a number which is more then 600% higher then what John McCain is basing his economic platform on.
Again, we ask, is his proposal realistic? Can he lower taxes?
The answer, clearly, is that even if we define “pet projects” as all social programs the government is in anyway involved in we still can not finance McCain’s War, never mind lower taxes.
But, that is not where the problem ends!
In my piece on Clinton (“Bill Speaks”) I made reference to the fact that there is a shortage of troops and so the idea of keeping our soldiers in Iraq and upping the number of soldiers we have in Afghanistan is preposterous.
To McCain’s credit, the first bullet point on the “Strategy for Victory” piece on his website is, “Bolstering Troops”. He clearly recognizes that in order to accomplish our mission in Iraq we must have more enlisted men this is to say nothing of the men we will need to fight/dismantle al Quaeda in Afghanistan.
Indeed his piece on why we need more troops is as good as any of the candidates. However, his recognition of this in no way affects his policy on the war.
I do not know if John McCain’s policies are the result of righteous rage or an attempt to pull in a Conservative Base which has been vocal about not supporting him. What I do know is that when you boil McCain’s policies down to their bottom line, what you’re left with is nothing but contradictions and unrealistic goals. And, if elected the Author of these contradictions will walk into the White House head held too high to see the people whom he was elected to serve. And from their these plans will march our enlisted men and women onto battlefields far bloodier then the ones which have already taken more then 4000 American lives and a trillion American dollars.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11495.html
www.johnmccain.com
About Me
- Brian M. Felder
- I am currently working on a Master's Degree/Cert. Program to teach English on the high school level. Prior to being a student I taught math: first, at Raliegh Charter High School (Raleigh, NC) and then at Dieruff High School (Allentown, PA). The swich from English to math was based on a number factors. However, as the title of the site implies I do not feel as though switching as either a student or a teacher of the one subject means I have left the other.
2 comments:
Shortly after I posted this piece a friend from college sent me a the following response. It is a response well worth reading as it questions and gives some arguments against what I am saying. (The comment after this one is my answers to his questions and arguments.)
A couple of points Brian, 1. I think you mean billions not millions in your war cost estimates. 2. It's impossible to know what the federal government's revenues will be if taxes go up versus if they stay low. That figure really depends on growth. Tax cuts stimulate growth and tax increases can hurt it, although not always. 3. The long tail costs of the war are a little misleading. The only thing that matters in any "going concern" be it private or public is can you make your payments TODAY. The Federal government's always done that and is in far more danger of failing to do it with our antiquated social security system than any military benefits issue. 4. You must consider how much it will cost the United States if we pull out of Iraq and that country decends into genocide and anarchy and its oil production is further disrupted or even halted altogether. The fundemental truth of the war in Iraq is that we CANT leave. We have to stablize that country and if we don't it will cost us far more than the war to date has. 5. At the end of the day, do any of these palty costs our country has endured measure up to the importance of the human rights of the 23 million people living in Iraq? Before the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein those people had no rights and no prospect of aquiring them. Today they have a democracy, if they can keep it. As ineffective as the Iraqi government is compared to our standards it is a far better thing than any government people living in that part of the world have ever known. If you believe in the ideals of the American Revolution, you must conclude our efforts there have been worth every penny and every drop of blood.
As promised, this is my response to the questions raised in Jason's (the friend from college) comment.
On The Cost of the War:
Yes, you are right, my figure should have been billions not millions, this is a correction I have posted on my site.
However, the 1 trillion dollar estimate was, according to some sources, low. The author of the piece I referenced who had said one trillion is now saying 2 trillion is conservative. Another is saying 3 trillion or more.
Still, you’re correction was certainly a valid one.
Also, to bring costs of the war to a more personal level, the website: www.nationalpriorities.org give projected costs for the FY 2009 and the trade off we are making by not spending the money elsewhere. Here is trade off for NY:
2,306,150 People with Health Care OR
23,412,494 Homes with Renewable Electricity OR
241,356 Public Safety Officers OR
190,448 Music and Arts Teachers OR
2,040,679 Scholarships for University Students OR
658 New Elementary Schools OR
71,086 Affordable Housing Units OR
4,369,925 Children with Health Care OR
1,424,779 Head Start Places for Children OR
144,842 Elementary School Teachers OR
187,943 Port Container Inspectors
On Taxes:
As far as whether or not tax cuts will stimulate the economy, it is a subject which politicians and economists have argued endlessly. Rather then engage in that argument I think we can agree that it is simply an unknown.
As far as whether or not we can pay for the war TODAY.
I may be misunderstanding what you mean when you say we can pay for this today. What our government is doing to pay for this conflict is, simply put, deficit spending. Deficit spending happens when the government’s expenditures exceed government revenues. So, I would argue that in fact we can not pay for this conflict.
As far as your argument that without US involvement Iraq falls to genocide and anarchy. Again, this is not a point which we can settle. However, I would offer the testimony of a growing number of veterans from Iraq saying that in fact US involvement might be raising the death toll of Iraqi civilians. An example being Former Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, a 12-year Marine veteran who said he saw more then 30 innocent Iraqi civilians killed by US gunfire at checkpoints in a 48 hour period.
*I gace the breakdown of how cost effects an individual state using New York as an example. However, the website I took that information from (www.nationalpriorities.org) breaks down the trade off between the war and the other things listed for every state.
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