Iraq: 46 billion, Kids: Zero October 23, 2007

In what’s being called a new Iraq showdown with Congress by US News & World Report, Bush, in a move of gargantuan audacity, requested an additional $46 billion in Iraq war and overseas military funding. This request comes on the heels of Bush’s hotly contested veto of $33 billion in health care funding for the S-CHIP program, which would have been expanded to cover children not covered by Medicaid but who could not afford private insurance. The request for additional funding, in light of the recent veto, caused Democrats to react with dismay:

Representative David R. Obey, Democratic of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, criticized Mr. Bush for pushing the extra financing even as the president attacked Democrats as spendthrifts.

“It’s amazing to me that the president expects to be taken seriously when he says we cannot afford $20 billion in investments in education, health, law enforcement and science, which will make this country stronger over the long term,” Mr. Obey said in a statement.

“But he doesn’t blink an eye at asking to borrow $200 billion for a policy in Iraq that leaves us six months from now exactly where we were six months ago.”

…The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said that the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq would pay for health-care coverage for 10 million children for a year.

Currently the war in Iraq costs American taxpayers, on average, $330 million a day.

The funding is not all slated to go to Iraq, as the New York Times tells us:

While the bulk of the money requested would go to the Defense Department, the proposal also includes nearly $800 million to support a United Nations peacekeeping mission and elections in Sudan; $106 million for fuel oil under a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program; and more than $400 million in assistance to the Palestinians as part of the administration’s efforts to nurture a peace treaty with Israel.

Were this funding request to pass, it would bring the grand total spent on Iraq and Afghanistan military operations to $806 billion, almost ten times as much as Gulf War I and almost $300 billion more than Vietnam, in today’s dollars.

I am inclined to react like Rep. Obey, how could the President even expect to be taken seriously , when he turns down healthcare for children and advocates increased military spending? Are we suffering under a leader with such callous disregard for his citizens that he would doom them to waste away to their deaths in hospital beds on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean?

(As an aside, the fact that Darfur funding AND North Korea’s nuclear disarmament fuel-oil trade program are bundled in with this is yet another slap in the face. No funding for war, no funding for Darfur? And this is the president whose “good moral character” was touted by Republicans?)

Perhaps The Seattle Timescan give us a bit of insight:

The Defense Department’s new Iraq war funding request proposes upgrading the B-2 stealth bomber to carry the military’s largest satellite-guided bomb capable of penetrating deeply buried bunkers. The Pentagon’s proposal is one sentence in the measure seeking $45.9 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush gave to Congress Monday. The extra money would be on top of $150.5 billion in previously requested war spending.

The new 30,000-pound bomb is six times bigger than the Air Force’s current 5,000-pound bunker-buster. Chicago-based Boeing is developing the bomb for the Pentagon agency that researches technology to counter weapons of mass destruction. The bomb was first successfully detonated in March.

Ah yes, where there’s Bush foibling, you’re bound to find some smidgeon of corporate cronyism.

Boeing gets 53% of its sales from its defense unit, a unit which had forecasted sales of $31 billion this year, down from $32 billion in 2006. They are looking to “generate foreign sales of F-15s and other fighters as the U.S. curbs spending on large aircraft programs.” (Wow! A huge aircraft sale just in the nick of time for Boeing! Good thing they don’t have to post that $1 billion loss from their forecasted figure!)

The death toll in Iraq currently stands at over 3,830 American soldiers.

So more important than S-CHIP is this bill. Granted, the White House did state that the only reason that S-CHIP was vetoed was because it was “poorly written legislation,” even though they had called it “expensive” at the time. If by bringing the troops home, such legislation could finally find its place on our lawbooks, then for every military servicemember who comes home alive, another child can make it through childhood alive and healthy. Saving 2 lives for the price of one.

Surely that’s got to be “common-sense” enough for the President.