Afghan War Costs Getting Ridiculous

Madam Speaker:

According to press reports, we are now going to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the 68,000 already there.

The Pentagon tells us it costs $1,000,000 a year for each soldier there, or one billion for each one thousand.

This means we will be spending over $100 billion a year on top of the almost half a trillion we have spent on the eight-year-old Afghanistan war already.

I know that like any gigantic bureaucracy, the Defense Department always wants more money and more employees.

But this is getting ridiculous.  And fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this spending. 

On top of all this, we still have 120,000 troops in Iraq and are still spending mega-billions there.

And the Pentagon is so bureaucratic, that we are told it will take several years to fully withdraw, if we ever do.

President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, but I think even he would be shocked.

This is all about money and power, but we can no longer afford to lose so many lives and spend and borrow so much money.