Price of war too high
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Philadelphia Inquirer
04/13/2010
As America inches closer to a decade of war, the cost increasingly is being questioned. People who years ago might have feared being called unpatriotic are lambasting the trillion dollars spent since 9/11.
A group called the National Priorities Project has a popular Web site that keeps a running tally of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It even breaks down the cost per city and suggests what could have been purchased in a year with that tax money.
Philadelphians' share of federal tax money spent on the wars, for example, is calculated at $3.8 billion since 2001. For that amount, 933,498 people could receive health care for a year, says NPP; 59,912 elementary-school teachers could be paid; 38,415 affordable-housing units provided; or 262,188 scholarships awarded.
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., population 47,000, was so impressed with the numbers for his town that he plans to attach a digital cost-of-war counter to the facade of City Hall. By September, Binghamton taxpayers will have contributed $138 million to fund the wars.
Ryan says the country's priorities are "skewed," and some mayors of larger cities, including Chicago's Richard Daley and Boston's Thomas Menino, have lately been leveling the same criticism.
It's not as if all that federal tax money would be redirected to America's cities were it not for the war, but their point is well taken. Nearly a quarter of Binghamton's residents have incomes below the poverty line, so it's understandable that their mayor would want the federal government to pay it more attention.
From another perspective, while struggling Americans should get the help they need, the poor economy amid the wars has forced cities to tailor their spending more carefully. While some, including Philadelphia, still cast longing eyes at the tax well, others are finding innovations to cut costs without gutting services.
Budget pressures felt from the White House to Binghamton City Hall should keep President Obama glued to his war plans. It will take a major setback for him to abandon his timetable to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by August and remove all U.S. forces by December 2011. But any cost savings may be offset by troop increases in Afghanistan.
The costs so far have led U.S. Rep. David Obey (D., Wis.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, to propose a war tax. A similar bill in 2007, with proceeds dedicated to the fighting in Iraq, had only seven cosponsors. But 19 have signed on to Obey's new bill, which would direct war-tax revenue to the Afghanistan theater.
Obey says a graduated surtax would cost a family earning $50,000 annually only $50. But that's the wrong calculation. He should consider that the mayors objecting to war spending are mirroring their constituents' desire to see more tax dollars spent otherwise. The nation is becoming war-weary.
