Did you know that the United States has spent $700 billion in Iraq since the war began — on direct military costs alone?
That’s just one of the things you’ll learn (if you didn’t already know them) in this HuffPost piece jointly authored by Barney Frank and Ron Paul. Here is some more:
As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues to interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.
By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion — more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.
It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.
This is the larger context in which Republicans in Congress and conservatives in general are arguing against extending unemployment benefits — while 15 million Americans try to survive without jobs, and for many, without any other source of income.
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