On Tax Day, A Reminder That War Is Not Free (VIDEO)

How many tax dollars from your community have gone to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? And how else could that money have been spent?

The National Priorities Project helps you figure that out quite easily, with its Cost of War web site. It shows you the total amount nationwide, then lets you dig down to see the results by community. You can also calculate the tradeoffs.

And Brave New Foundation today is out with a new online short, starring Democratic Reps. Alan Grayson (Fla.), Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), and Barbara Lee (Calif.), reminding tax payers to consider how the war in Afghanistan is affecting the economy and job recovery in the United States today.

"The resident of Tucson," Grijalva says, "have paid $298 million of their tax dollars to the war in Afghanistan. That translates to 6,000 new jobs in the health care industry."

Over on Facebook, Brave New Foundation is also asking you to tell them what would you want to fix if we could spend those funds here at home instead .

Writing for TomDispatch.com, Jo Comerford, executive director of the National Priorities Project, found one mayor who wants everyone to know what he could have done with his city's 'war tax'.

Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities "squabble over crumbs," as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon's coffers and into America's wars. He's so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he's decided to do something about it. He's planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the facade of City Hall with a large, digital "cost of war" counter, funded entirely by private contributions.

That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total price Binghamton's taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city's "war tax" will reach $138.6 million--or even more if, as expected, Congress passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover the president's "surge" in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to put the counter "where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are urged to have a much-needed conversation."

Comments

[shivasquest]

11:30 PM on 04/15/2010

2 Wars and taxcuts?..and private contractors to fill in the gaps?Hey thats as "free " as it gets!!

[dfranz]

08:43 PM on 04/15/2010

$1,000,000 per man per year. Do the math.

[JDM73]

07:27 PM on 04/15/2010

Bring the troops home. End this madness. Regardless of who's in the White House, this protracted conflict in Afghanistan is a bad, bad idea.

[amleth]

07:04 PM on 04/15/2010

For all those weeping, wailing, and lamenting the vast amounts of money owed by the American public to the American public, why don't any of them seem to recognize that there are three trillion dollars owed for the two current wars since the Bush admin refused to fund them.

Unfunded mandates?

For the ages!

The NCLB education bill was unfunded too, but a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of these wars.

And do you really think you are any safer for the waging of them?

The Bush admin had Osama surrounded and trapped and could not pull the trigger to capture him out of their own ineptitude.

Now we are fighting a religious war in a country in which we have no actual interests short of pretending that Al Qaeda is somehow being hampered in Afghanistan when actually they are thriving almost everywhere else.

Brilliant!

[ThermoChemist]

11:09 PM on 04/15/2010

Don't forget Dubya's UNFUNDED $8 TRILLION Medicare prescription plan..!

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200509/ai_n15643757/

-- In 2003: Republicans initiated, and passed, an UNFUNDED Medicare prescription drug plan (estimated price tag of $8 trillion)
-- In 2009: Republicans are NOW against FULLY-FUNDED Universal healthcare plan (estimated price tag around $1 trillion)

Where were the multitude of Republican protests in 2003 for a plan that cost 8 times as much [then] as the plan currently [accepted]?

-- GAO says government failed yet another financial audit
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1207/121707cdpm1.htm

"With Bush administration officials looking on, Walker took particular aim at the White House's prescription drug benefit program and the way the administration sold the plan. Medicare is worth about $8 trillion of the gap created by Medicare, according to GAO.

"Incredibly, this number was not disclosed or discussed until after Congress had voted on the bill and the president had signed it into law," Walker noted. "In many ways, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug episode represents government truth and transparency at its worst," he added."

[JoeBlough]

06:53 PM on 04/15/2010

Apparently, Afghanistan is not a war. It’s a jobs program for unemployed civilians. It was reported yesterday that there are more U.S. civilians in Afghanistan than there are soldiers. And each civilian earns 4X the amount of a soldier’s salary, all taxpayers’ money. What’s that about? Look’s like the scope of our commitment has runaway! We will be there forever.

[axoaxo]

06:28 PM on 04/15/2010

http://costofwar.com/

total cost + breaks down: per person, tax payer, family

[VietVet67]

05:59 PM on 04/15/2010

So how much did Dubya plunk down for these two disasters?

[iLoveGiraffes]

05:16 PM on 04/15/2010

Heres another reminder; Freedom isn't Free.

http://www.freedomisnotfree.com/

[bothpartiesareworthless]

05:07 PM on 04/15/2010

Call it what you want but it is not a war. Those have to be declared by congress and you know that did not happen. But really it is not free I thought the Fed just fires up the printing presses they have and every thing is cool.

[BigTuna]

05:06 PM on 04/15/2010

Income tax rates should automatically go up by at least 10-20% across all but perhaps the lowest of the tax brackets whenever war is declared or military force is authorized by Congress. Not only would it help pay for the operations, it would also inject some much-needed caution into our foreign policy decisions by exposing the true cost of war to the 99.5% of people who currently do not bear any direct burden.

[Stevealmi]

04:45 PM on 04/15/2010

1. Not a war, a conflict. Did they declare war when I was not paying attention?
2. Americans would be very mad if they could do math outside of a calculator. Iraqi conflict was costing us 300 million dollars a day. At it's high point, 140,000 troops were serving in the conflict. 100K a year per soldier you still only come up with less than 5 million dollars a day. 295 million dollars a day went to Cheney's best friends. Worse yet, for the most part, they did not pay taxes because our Congress allowed military contracts awarded to companies who do not reside in the continental US.

[JoeBlough]

06:55 PM on 04/15/2010

140,000 troops + 150,000 U.S. civilians over there.

[grouseless54]

04:23 PM on 04/15/2010

Being an extra-conservative when I calculate the budgetary costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, I note that there are the current costs and that their is also the projected total costs that include interest on our "free" wars, the ultimate cost estimations on care for our wounded and what may turn out to be the greatest cost of all - lost opportunity - the feature of this article.
I have a spread sheet that pops up on my computer screen, from time to time. It declares my household's share of the war - now pushing $15,000.00. When I meet someone who still supports the war, I ask them if they can write that check, for $7,500 per person in the household. When they demur, I ask them: "If not you - who supports the war - then who?" Most of the people I catch in this trap are anit-government and wish their taxes were lower. The thought of writing a check for any specified amout to Uncle Sam sends them into paroxysms, but I meet very few who could pay out in cash on short notice anyway.
I think every American needs to look at these mounting costs everyday and ask themselves:
1. Could I afford to write that check today?
2. If not, then it's high time we gave up on the pretence and proflicacy that these wars represent

[annie0107]

04:14 PM on 04/15/2010

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - started under the Bush/Cheney administration - have been free for the rich in America. They were granted tax breaks by the previous administration at the same time these two wars were started.

[T2inDC]

04:07 PM on 04/15/2010

Rethink paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rethink the fortunes of the Military Industrial Complex.

[Mildmannered]

03:39 PM on 04/15/2010

We need to raise the tax on gasoline:
(1) to pay for the wars;
(2) to remind everyone when they pull up to the pump that we are fighting two wars; and
(3) to encourage more efficient use of gasoline (a) for environmental reasons and (b) so less money goes to governments that support terrorist organizations