Pentagon war spending hits $685.7 billion - GAO

[UpInArms]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to fight terrorism elsewhere has reached $685.7 billion since 2001, a U.S. government watchdog agency said on Monday.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, said the Iraq war accounted for $533.5 billion in Defense Department spending obligations through last December, while spending on operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and the Philippines totaled $124.1 billion.

The remaining $28.1 billion was for operations to defend the U.S. mainland, the GAO said in a letter to Congress dated March 30.

The spending total equals about 85 percent of the $808 billion that Congress has appropriated for military operations in the global war on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the GAO said.

The $122.3 billion difference reflects multiyear contracts for procurement, military construction, research, development and other programs, the watchdog agency said.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN3036687120090330

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Where would we be if we hadn't been put in this position by the BFEE and the neocons?

[TBF]

1. Better question: how do we go about securing our future?

Answer: Bring our soldiers home NOW!

[endarkenment]

2. That, I believe, is a whole lot of change.

Finally, change I can believe in. There is no denying that $685.7 is a massive amount of change.

"The remaining $28.1 billion was for operations to defend the U.S. mainland"

And that is approximately what our military budget ought to be. Just think what we could do with 650B or so spent on something other than war.

[Brucie Kibbutz]

8. Do you want to let the terrist just come over here and kill us all?

We have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here!

[Psephos]

12. "Just think what we could do with 650B"

We could pay for about five months' worth of the budget deficit for the coming fiscal year alone.

All that cash dumped into Iraq for the past seven years would offset about 20 weeks of the coming year's national credit card binge. Or, if you want to think of it in terms of the entire budget, and not just the deficit, it works out to about ten week's worth of the coming year's government spending.

Chump change.

The US government paid $412 billion last year alone in interest payments, increasingly to foreign holders of US debt. That's money that can't be used for other urgent domestic needs, instead heading to pay interest to China, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and a host of others. Unless the government starts making payments on principal (no such payments are planned for at least the next decade), that amount will keep going up, up, up, year after year after year.

Sobering, isn't it?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget

http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=159954&t=01006124249416869148

[Brucie Kibbutz]

14. nope. can't do it. sorry.

gotta hire more mercenaries to keep us safe :patriot:

[Politicalboi]

3. Did they ever account for the

2.3 Trillion dollars they lost and announced on 09/10/01????? My guess NO!

[liberal renegade]

4. Sickening! n/t

[Bigmack]

5. As the Trident subs....

with NO MISSION... sail by my house on a nearly-daily basis, I think to myself "I'm sure glad we spend all that money on those weapons, rather than pissing it away on health care or infrastructure repair or alternative energy or like that."

(Singing) "I'M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN, WHERE AT LEAST I KNOW I'M FREE....."

Deep, dark, money-down-the-shitter :sarcasm: intended.

[L0oniX]

6. ...but single payer health care is too expensive! pffft

[Diclotican]

7. UpInArms

UpInArms

To me, on the outside it looks like you go the same road as the USSR was doing in the 1970-1980s. Military spending was overwhelming the economical life, and in the end, the whole system was broke.. And when Gorbatsjev tried to reform it, it blow up and it was to late.... And in 1991 the whole Soviet union was goon by december...

Off course, the history of the US is different from the Soviet, but even US can go broke... To spend 533,5 billion of defense spending can't be good for a country in economical problems, as your USA are today.. Sooner or later it just can't be hold up...

But off course, the US would not be broke, as american tell them selfs all the time. US is different from everyone else nation at the face of the nation.. US is blessed, USA is special... Very special...

I guess most american are into some ugly surprise in the future.. No nation can spend money, without have the money to spend it.. If you spend money you doesn't have, sooner or later it will came back and bite you.. When you last need it...

I for one, feel sorry for all my americans friends, both here at DU and otherwice... Very sorry because most of them is decent, human and good people who have no fault about what can happened to the US.. But all this spending can't be good.... Just can'¨t be good.. Just thing what this money could be spent on... Health care, industry, modern and clean.. Alternative energy and so on... It is amazing how long you can use 533.5 billion on alternative energy... Or public affordable health care...

Diclotican

[UpInArms]

17. I fear that the "printing press" is not going to "save" us -

just turn us into Zimbabwe - a broken USSR at least could revert to "Russia" and its separate states - we (the USofA) don't have that history to guide our mess back to the future

[Diclotican]

18. UpInArms

UpInArms

I doubt that US can turn into another Zimbabwe, you have a lot more industry, and a far better economy than Zimbabwe have at present.. Still your inflation are not by the millions, or billions as in Zimbabwe yet..

What I fear is more that the US can go the way of what become of Germany in the time between WW1 and WW2 Where the economy was almost ruined and most germans was desperate for a living... And it took more than a decade, plus a war who ended in total misery for the germans, to finally get both the democracy thing, and the economy on track again..
Off course, the germans had more problems, with the economy after WW1 because of the large sum of money they have to pay to everyone else who had been attached by Germany. And the wound the germans was feeling because they got the blame for the war itself..

Russia do had a older history than the USSR even that the new modern Russia is far smaller than even the imperial Russia was.. Most of the former union members, was provinces within Russia.. And some had been parts of Russia for centuries. Like Ukraine, who in many prospect is the "birthplace" of Russia. Many, or maybe most large Ukrainian City's have common history with Russia and russians..

I hope not US would broke up, but US can end up as broke.. And the US dollar as no fiat economy for the world... How turbulent that would be before a new currency is made to replace the dollar.. I doubt even the EURO can replace the Dollar... Not at the moment anyway..

Diclotican

[tritsofme]

9. $700 billion here, $700 billion there

Pretty soon you're talking real money.

[Doctor_J]

10. Horseshit

It is at least a trillion at this point.

[paparush]

11. Dammit! Think of how many more banks we could have bailed out! Oh, wait..

I mean, um, think of how many schools we could have built, roads and bridges we could have repaired, alternative energy avenues we could have explored.

[Thor_MN]

13. Terrorism is a tactic, commonly used when asymmetric warfare is in play

Quite ironic to justify huge military expeditures to declare war on a tactic that is used by people that are facing an opponent that severely out spends them in military terms.

[FailureToCommunicate]

15. All that hand wringing about "$700 BILLION!" when we've been throwing that

to the Pentagon for years now with hardly any fuss in Congress or "main street".

more on $$ on this thread:
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5347680&mesg_id=5347680

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. And that's just the on-the-books stuff.