Say you're a Democratic member of Congress. You proudly cast your vote for Obamacare, you cheered when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed it as the achievement of a generation and you scoffed at Republicans who vowed to repeal it. Now you're running for re-election, and a voter asks: What is the most important thing you've done in the last two years?
The answer should be easy. In passing the national health care bill, you accomplished something your party dreamed of for decades. It was your most important vote, and now is the time to take credit for it.
Except it's not.
The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict:
American taxpayers have picked up the tab for billions of dollars worth of shoddy schools, phantom health care clinics and government buildings abandoned before completion in Afghanistan, according to members of a U.S. team that arrived in Kabul on Monday to document the waste and fraud.
After her sterling public image took on some tarnish from her recent vacation to Spain, the White House announced that first lady Michelle Obama will appear with Laura Bush for Sept. 11 observances in Pennsylvania.
The deft public relations move by the administration will place the two popular first ladies side-by-side for the first time since the 2008 inauguration.
This is standard operating procedure for government. Increase government, claiming it's for suffering people, or workers, or kids, or somebody sympathetic, while it's really corporate welfare.
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