“A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
                                        - Mis-attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen

When it comes to national spending, we are in sore need of straightening out our priorities.  We hear the anger and frustration over the stimulus package, healthcare and Wall Street bonuses, but I recently came across a couple of sobering figures that show just how out of whack our government spending really is.

My premise, and I don’t think there is anyone outside the Wall Street environs who will disagree with me, is that the job situation in the U.S. passed critical a long time ago and hasn’t shown any signs of getting better.  Washington and Wall Street may tell us the economy is recovering, but try telling that to the family who lost their home sometime in the past two years, or to those whose unemployment benefits have run out and are still out of work, or even to those who are drawing unemployment benefits but can’t find a job.  The problem is staggering.

Worst of all, it is not expected to go away for at least two more years, if then.  Although I remain a passionate supporter of President Obama, I am extremely disappointed in his failure to address the rebuilding of our national infrastructure and, in the process, putting people back to work doing that rebuilding. 

We hear repeatedly the problems with the National Debt, the cost of healthcare reform and the economic burden the stimulus package has placed on our children and grandchildren.  But no one talks about taking from the sacred cow of the American budget, the American Military, in order to help address any of these issues.  Why in the world are we continuing to spend nearly a Billion dollars a month in Iraq and Afghanistan when there is no credible evidence (I don’t consider Dick Cheney’s statements to the contrary as credible) that these efforts are doing anything to secure our safety?

On the contrary, there is significant evidence that our involvement in these two countries has done much to alienate large portions of the world’s population and has provided a powerful recruiting rationale for those who seek to perpetrate another 9/11 on the West.  Why haven’t we considered using the money we are blowing up in Iraq and Afghanistan to address our failing infrastructure and our jobless situation at home?

Over the weekend, Bob Herbert, addressing the need to rebuild our worn out road system, wrote in the New York Times, “The Federal Highway Administration has estimated that every $1 billion of investment in the Federal Highway Aid program generates 42,100 full-time equivalent jobs.”

I decided to try to contrast that with the number of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan that can be employed for $1 billion.  A recent study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, a Washington-based think tank, concluded that the cost for a single soldier to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan is $775,000 per year, and increasing.   This means that for $1 billion we can either employee 1,290 soldiers to fight in two meaningless wars, or we can employee 42,100 people to re-build our roads.

Furthermore, according to a 2007 article by the New Statesman, America won’t simply be paying for Iraq and Afghanistan with today’s dollars and with dead soldiers.  The Pentagon attempted to silence economists who predicted that several decades of after-service care for the wounded from these two wars will amount to an unbelievable $2.5 trillion.  Kinda makes the economic burden we’re passing on to our grandchildren because of the stimulus and healthcare pale, doesn’t it?

Now, I’m not so naïve as to presume the problem is really this simple; nor do these few facts begin to cover the myriad of intersecting issues with which we need to deal.  But, to my simple mind, it would make a whole lot of sense for us to take a hard look into making some trade-offs.