What costs more, a lie-based quagmire in Iraq, or universal health care?

Question

Any websites with a comparison of the costs of Bush's lie-based war for oil vs. providing Americans with affordable health care?

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll455.xml
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237#top


If you look at the numbers, you will see that 126 Democrats in the House and 21 Democrats in the Senate voted against the lie-based Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll455.xml

Only SIX REPUBLICANS in the House and ONE Republican in the Senate voted against the LIE-BASED QUAGMIRE.

Of the 255 Democrats in Congress at that time, a majority, 153, voted AGAINST the resolution.
Only 102 Democrats in Congress voted for it.

So, the notion that Democrats SHARE RESPONSIBILITY because a MINORITY OF DEMOCRATS BELIEVED THE LIES ABOUT WMD, is patently RIDICULOUS.

FOR AN INTERESTING COST COMPARISON, CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

Answer 1

Truthisback - Bush pushed the CIA and FBI to produce war-friendly evidence and cherrypicked anything that supported their 'theory' of WMDs in Iraq. This evidence was then given to Congress, who was given a very short window of time to view it. Congress then gave Bush authority to disarm Saddam if inspections failed.... not bog down in a quagmire for 4 years.

Answer 2

Whose lies are you referring to exactly? The president or his administration have nothing to do with the intellegence which in part based their decision. Besides, to think there aren't now, or have ever been WMD's in Iraq is just plain naive. Universas Health Care on the other hand is the biggest lie of all. There isn't a American today denied Health Care. You are asking taxpayers to pony up for those too lazy to get a job, despite the fact they would never be denied treatment.

Answer 3

Universal Health Care..

Answer 4

Dude, I'm just going to ignore the whole 'lie based war' thing. As far as which one costs more, I would have to say universal health-care would cost a WHOLE bunch more. Right now, only about 4% of our GDP is spent on the military. America already spends about 15% of it's total GDP on health-care. You plug everyone into a federal health care system, it would be a disaster. There is just too much waste, by our government right now, to even consider universal health-care.

Answer 5

Universal health care. Even if it fails and they rewrite a better policy in a couple years to replace it... Doubtful, but it'll cost billions more.

Answer 6

Our young liberal friends seem to divide into two camps. There is the camp of enlightened progressives like Jacob Aronson that is dedicated to "Conserving and Consolidating the Progressive Liberal Tradition" and reforming government "along private-sector lines."
Then there is the angry left of Markos Moulitsas. In "The Case for the Libertarian Democrat." Kos sees real danger ahead as corporations become more powerful than
governments.

It is fine for these enthusiasts to propose, on the margin, what benevolent government should do next, but they completely miss the elephant in the room. There is one thing and one thing only for the Democratic Party to do, and that is to keep the checks coming to its millions of supporters. We are talking about big money. To understand why this is so let us take a look at government spending in the US. Not just the federal government, but all governments. Here is the projected spending by all levels of government on the five biggest government programs for 2007:


Government Pensions: $875 billion
Government Health Care: $850 billion
Government Education: $750 billion
National Defense: $650 billion
Government Welfare: $425 billion


Think of that. The primary role for government, they tell us, is to defend us from enemies foreign and domestic. But in the modern world we have to send the checks out to seniors, provide free and subsidized health care, and pay the teachers. Then we can worry about thug dictators and local street thugs. Usnmentspending.com

The federal budget numbers come from the file Table 3.2 - Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962-2010 in Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2008 published by the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The historical state-and-local government spending comes from State and Local Government Finances published by the United States Census Bureau.


Think about the numbers for a moment. They start with nearly a trillion dollars a year in government pensions-and baby boomers aven't yet started to collect their, I mean our, Social Security yet. Then there is $850 billion in government health care, mostly Medicare and Medicaid-and baby boomers haven't yet started to collect on our Medicare.


There is $750 billion in government education-K-12, universities, and the like. When the educators talk about underfunding education, what are they talking about? Finally, after this important stuff, we come down to the Pentagon, the veterans, and the military-industrial complex. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Enough with the
military-industrial complex routine already. I agree.

There is no doubt that the Pentagon and its military-industrial complex of defense contractors is a fearsome special interest that affects national defense policy in many harmful ways just as President Eisenhower warned us so many years ago. But the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex are only running a distant fourth place in the "fill-in-the-blank"-industrial complex stakes. Let us talk about the pension-industrial complex. You can read a horror story about it every day, like this one about the underfunded pensions of the State of New Jersey. Did you know that the payment of pensions to government employees is guaranteed in the constitution of many states? First things first.

Let us talk about the medical-industrial complex. $750 billion is a lot of money for the government to spend on a highly regulated system that hits a mere #40 in the life expectancy world rankings published in The Economist's Pocket World in Figures 2007 Edition. Some out-of-the-box commentators think that it will soon enter critical condition as people opt for health tourism.


Let us talk about the education-industrial complex. We spend $750 billion a year for that baby. Yet literacy in the United States has not significantly changed in the 160 years since centralized government education began in the United States. As I reported recently in The American Thinker: 15 percent of US adults [today are rated] as "proficient" in literacy and 13 percent "proficient" in numeracy." That is according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.


In the current War on Terror, or clash of civilizations, we are being reminded that the war is a failure and that the Bush administration never had a plan in Iraq. In fact our liberal friends feel that the failures in Iraq are sufficient reason to abandon the whole thing as Bush's fault and a dreadful mistake. Get out of a mistaken initiative.


Good point, liberals. So why not ditch the whole mess of government pensions, government health care, and government education, bloody messes that eat up about $2.5 trillion a year, four times the budget of the Pentagon and 25 times the $100 billion a year cost of the Iraq mess?


Jacob Aronson and Kos are missing the point. Who cares if the government could be better-managed, or if corporations are becoming too powerful? That's kids' stuff. The only thing that matters for the next Democratic administration is to keep those trillions of dollars coming to the millions of faithful Democratic voters. Yes. We are talking about trillions.

Answer 7

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/quagmire

Universal Health care does.

No war for oil, nice talking point parrot.

Who also provided the info and argument for Bush to go into Iraq?: http://www.glennbeck.com/news/01302004.shtml

Answer 8

universal healthcare!!!

many studies on the topic have low estimates because their authors are socialists that want to see universal healthcare at any cost. just remember early studies on the cost of Iraq....

I promise, Iraq is a bargain compared to uhc.

Answer 9

Universal health care.

Answer 10

Why do libs believe the war is for Bush's monetary gain yet global warming isn't for Gore's monetary gain?