Those revenue problems must be wider, vaster, and deeper than we all imagined even in our wildest dreams. Goodbye, AmeriKan MSM.
"Study Criticizes Bush Approach to War Funding, Calls for Changes" by Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post | December 26 2008
President-elect Barack Obama's administration needs to monitor war spending much more closely than the current White House has, according to a new study that criticizes President Bush's approach to funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- a bill that is projected to approach nearly $1 trillion next year.
Even with declining troop numbers in Iraq, the direct price tag of the two wars could grow as high as $1.7 trillion by 2018, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reported last week. The defense think tank's figure does not include potentially hundreds of billions more in indirect economic and social costs, such as higher oil prices and lost wages.
The war in Iraq alone has already cost more in inflation-adjusted dollars than every other U.S. war except World War II, the CSBA found....
So we are JUST ABOUT at WWIII!!!!
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The CSBA... blamed the ballooning budgets on the Bush administration's unprecedented decision to fund the wars through giant emergency spending measures rather than through appropriations requests.
"The process has reduced the ability of Congress to exercise effective oversight. It has also tended to obscure the long-term costs and budgetary consequences of ongoing military operations," the report says....
The report also rapped the Bush administration's paying for the wars through borrowing, rather than tax increases and spending cuts. That approach, it concluded, will lead to interest costs through 2018 that range from about $70 billion to as high as about $700 billion, depending on how much of the war funding came through bond sales....
Isn't that interesting. That is the same amount that the war has already costs, and the same amount as Paulson's bailout.
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The Globe gives me this crapola instead:
Memories of family tug at troops in Iraq
"Christians return to securer Baghdad; Hundreds mark Christmas in city" by Kimi Yoshino and Ali Hameed, Los Angeles Times | December 26, 2008
BAGHDAD - .... Even as worshipers gathered, violence struck a few miles away. A car bomb exploded yesterday near a popular restaurant in northwestern Baghdad, killing four and injuring 25 others.
In Diyala Province, about 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber targeted an American patrol convoy in front of the Muqdadiya police station. Three civilians were killed and 14 others were injured, including four Iraqi police officers, authorities said.
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Oh, yeah, the violence: Occupation Iraq: A Routine Day
