Bush Asks for $700 Billion for War on Terror
Thursday February 8, 2007
The President's FY 2008 Budget Proposal asks for a total of $700 billion for the Department of Defense and the War on Terror for FY 2008. This is twice as much as all other Discretionary budget items combined.
Congress now must decide whether they agree on several things:
- Is $600-700 billion enough to achieve the nation's goals in the War on Terror?
- Can the U.S. really afford the cost, given a projected budget deficit at around $250 billion each year?
- Is this really our nation’s highest priority for scarce discretionary funds?
By the way, just to put it in perspective, $700 billion is a little more than everything produced by Australia last year (2006 GDP=$666.3 billion).
Comments
There isn’t enough money on the planet to win a war on a kind of behavior.
Terrorism is a criminal activity…which makes it a police matter, not a military one.
That said, the best way to ‘combat’ terrorism is to address the root causes of terrorism…which have a lot more to do with economics than religion.