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A Billion Here, A Billion There

Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

September 5, 2007

"I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math. I'm entitled to THE math." — Karl Rove

Remember back in October of 2006 when Karl Rove claimed to posses THE math, a math that, as he saw it, predicted a Republican—led Congress in the following month's elections? As we say goodbye (and good riddance) to Karl Rove this month, it makes me wonder what other damage his math might have done?

Perhaps Rove's math is the reason that the U.S. budget deficit will likely rise from $158 billion this year to $244 billion next year, and is predicted to reach $400 billion in 2011. Faulty math aside, the primary reason for this astounding deficit increase is the astounding level of spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What else might Rove's math bring us?

With Congress back from their August recess, President Bush will soon be paying them a visit to ask for $50 billion in additional funding for Iraq and Afghanistan – when he hasn't even started spending the $147 billion already approved in a pending supplemental appropriations bill – that's nearly $200 billion! And that's on top of the $460 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2008.

Now, I like numbers — I was a math major in college. But even I can't wrap my head around what $200 billion dollars a year buys these days.

Let's start by talking about what it could be buying us.

According to the National Priorities Project (NPP), Iraq war spending in fiscal year 2007 will total $137.6 billion. Instead of spending that money on a tragic war and failed reconstruction efforts, we could have funded:

• Health care for 58 million children or 30 million adults, or
• Scholarships for 23 million college students, or
• 2 million elementary school teachers, or
• 1 million affordable housing units

And that's just with one year of war costs.

I live in Maryland,and according to NPP, Maryland taxpayers have paid $2.7 billion for the war so far this year. For that chunk of change, we could have provided health care for nearly a million children, or built 14,000 public housing units. Want to check out the numbers for your state? Here's the calculator.

How about some other ways we could spend taxpayers' hard—earned dollars – ways that actually make people's lives better? The Violence Against Women Act, signed by President Clinton in 1994, hasn't been fully funded for years – yet it would cost only an extra $175 million to fully fund VAWA programs – less than one day in Iraq.

And then there's child care. The Child Care and Development Block Grant Program is the federal program that provides child care assistance to low—income women. The number of children served has been declining steadily, and $720 million would offset years of neglect and under—funding. That's a lot of money, nearly a billion dollars, but it's less than we spend on Iraq in four days, or even fewer by some estimates!

Now, a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. In fact, defense spending accounts for 59 percent of the budget for fiscal year 2008. Maybe you could argue the point without repressing a laugh if the money was (a) being spent wisely or (b) being used to achieve reasonable and measurable goals. But it's quite another when it's being squandered and, largely, given away to administration cronies.

Michael Brush, writing for MSN Money, recently examined the top 10 contractors making money in Iraq. It should come as no surprise that the company KBR, Inc., which was a subsidiary of Halliburton, topped the list. Between 2003 and 2006, the company raked in a over $17 billion in revenues related to Iraq. Did they earn that money the old fashioned way, by delivering the goods on time and for a fair price? Maybe some of it, but a fair bit of it resulted from fraud, testified Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the highest—ranking civilian contracting officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, before a congressional committee in 2005. Greenhouse was demoted soon after, ostensibly for performance reasons. An employee of KBR, Julie McBride, testified that she knew officials to have double— and triple—padded the number of soldiers using their facilities. After voicing her concerns, McBride was kept in seclusion and specifically told not to speak to any member of the U.S. military.

More and more stories are coming to light, about whistleblowers being demoted (or worse) for speaking out about fraud and corruption among U.S. contractors in Iraq and yet the administration remains mum about their friends.

Finally, the media is taking note of these accounts of fraud and corruption. Perhaps the most detailed account of the money—wasting comes from, of all places, Rolling Stone magazine. Kudos to reporter Matt Taibbi for telling it like it is in irreverent style: "Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government." Summarizing the article wouldn't do it justice, you can read it yourself here.

There's long been a stereotype that women are bad at math, but we can't hold a candle to Karl Rove's "special" math. It's time to stop the bleeding in more ways than one, and bring our troops home quickly and safely. Take a minute right now to urge Congress to vote for "No More Money, No More War."

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