War on Health Care

President Bush 2008 Budget has vowed to spend taxpayers’ dollars wisely. He also vowed to make health care fairer, more affordable, more accessible, and flexible.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/budget/2008/index.html

On October 22, a request was made for a further $45.9 billion in war-related spending for fiscal year 2008. This request is on top of $147 billion already requested for the Department of Defense and $3.6 billion for other agencies for the fiscal year. If appropriated by Congress, the vast majority would be spent on Iraq. Total spending for the Iraq War would rise to approximately $611 billion.

According to testimony by the Congressional Budget Office, if one includes debt service costs in long-term U.S. deployment scenarios, the total cost for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach between $1.765 trillion and $2.365 trillion by 2017.

The United States accounts for half of all the military spending in the world.
Congress and the White House allocate $522 billion a year to the Defense Budget. The country with the next highest military budget is China with $63 billion dollars per year.


To put it in perspective the proposed spending budget for the Iraq War for the year 2008 is $155.5 Billion but if these tax dollars were put into Health Care could provide 44,330,909 People in the United States with Health Care.

President Bush vetoed the SCHIP Child Health Insurance which could have provided health care for 5 million children. The cost of the Iraq war for the year 2007 is $ 137.6 billion which if spent for children’s health could have covered 58,681,896 children for a year.

To find out the trade off in education, housing, or health care for our defense budget by state or congressional district check out the following site:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Trade-Offs.html

Is this the best use of taxpayers’ money, Mr. Bush?
$611 Billion for the Iraq War- YES
Children’s Health Insurance- NO