Unpleasant math

What can $1.2 trillion buy?

Less than half of that would let us double cancer research funding, treat every American who has diabetes or heart disease and immunize every child on the planet against measles, whooping cough, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio and diptheria -- all for a decade.

$350 billion would provide a decade of universal pre-school.

$100 billion over a decade would be enough to fully implement the 9/11 Commissions recommendations and provide more aid to Afghanistan.

Or you could choose, as we have, to blow it all on Iraq. And that's a relatively conservative estimate.

The sheer scale of waste and forgone opportunities boggles the mind.

Iraq, budget, money, politics, midtopia