This is not a new point, but it keeps getting lost in the noise:

Estimated cost of health care reform over the next ten years: Approximately $950 billion.

Estimated cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last nine years: More than one trillion.

Why are we all of a sudden a “socialist regime” since Obama took office? Does military spending not count? Why is this never discussed in typical knee-jerk teabagger arguments?

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

28 replies on “Teabag This”

  2. I brought it up in exchanges with teabaggers at town-hall meetings last summer. Most of them, after stuttering for a minute, acknowledged that they thought that spending was wrong, too.

    Though I’m sure they forgot about it ten seconds later.

  3. Because the right wing “thinks” it’s just fine to throw away money on unnecessary wars and the military/industrial complex but an outrage to spend money on the poor. Especially if the poor are black or brown. Bottom line.

  6. Military spending is sacrosanct. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have placed substantial cuts to military spending on the table. Half of our tax dollars go to defense, and that’s before the costs for Iraq and Afghanistan are figured in (remember that the Bush administration was very careful to disguise the costs of those wars by not including them in the general budget.)

    Obviously we could easily cut our military spending in half or more, suffer no loss in our ability to defend ourselves, and balance the budget in relatively short order. But we never will, because even the supposedly “liberal” Democrats realize that appearing weak on defense is political suicide.

  7. Because teabaggers approve of tax dollars spent on what they consider very worthwhile – removing brown people from the earth, one war at a time!

  9. I was told by a teabagging Republican that “that’s defense! that’s different!” But he wouldn’t tell me anything about their apparently “secret” attack on us, proposed attack on us, or even their “Minority Report”-style thought-about attack on us. As someone who would have been sympatetic with their views several decades before (in the meantime I had “facts” and “reason” get in the way), I’m confused and embarrassed.

  10. If the baggers are the reincarnation of the Birchers (which they’re not, at least in the sense of articulating their position), defense would be just about the only thing they would consider acceptable or even constitutional. Armed forces and post office is just about it, everything else is the individual state’s responsibility.

  14. I make this point constantly, both about HCR and the cost of the stimulus. If we hadn’t blown all this fucking money on two stupid wars nobody gives a fuck about we’d have had cash/credit enough to handle the economic downturn AND HCR.

    You can’t have an eight-year cocaine party on your Dad’s credit card then bitch when he can’t afford to buy you a pair of fucking shoes.

  15. We should be so lucky as to have the Iraq/Afghanistan wars cost $1 trillion. The big thing that people are always missing is that caring for wounded soldiers for the rest of their lives is estimated at $2 TRILLION OR MORE on top of the cost of the fighting itself. Wounds were awful but survival higher because of better/faster extraction and field treatment, consequently disability is often profound. The soldiers deserve absolutely everything we can do for them for the rest of their lives. But that doesn’t change the fact that the cost is horrendous, and sadly as we already know, the VA and other military health care behemoths often deny or delay care, or give incompetent/incomplete care just like the civilian commercial healthcare industry.

  16. Teabaggers think there’s nothing wrong with health care in this country, so why spend money on it? Also, defense spending goes to help our “freedom.”

    They’re a pack of mouth-breathing idiots.

  17. The only thing I find interesting about the teabaggers is they sum up the generations of idiotic American thinking in one nice, neat ball. Everything you need to know about the policies, practices and thinking behind the very things that will destroy America are present within them. Other than that, they’re simply air-stealers & time-wasters.

  19. Oh, and the cost of winding down the war is usually overlooked. All that equipment has to be brought home or trashed such that it doesn’t fall into potential enemies’ hands. You’re talking about flying home all the Buffalos, HumVees, choppers, field hospitals, on and on, in heavy-transport planes. Once here, those up-armored HumVees, etc. need to be almost completely rebuilt if they are to be kept–a couple of extra tons of armor puts a lot of strain on suspension components, drivetrains, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if stand-down costs approach another $500 billion.

    I’d like to see a separate government agency formed just to track all these costs and engrave them on Mount Rushmore or something so they’ll be remembered next time some cowboy wants to get us in a war for bullshit reasons. Also include Dumsfeld’s breezy early estimates of a couple of months and a few tens of billions tops. Why the fuck the teabaggers don’t bag on that, I’ll never understand or condone.

  21. Would someone please explain the deficit-reducing component of $1 trillion in spending? I know there are some new high-earning/high-benefits taxes, but I don’t understand whether the HCR bill will *supposedly* be a net spend or net savings when the new revenue is factored in.

  22. defense spending equal to that of the 10 next largest militaries combined isn’t socialism. it’s nationalism. please make a note.

  23. You guys are all preaching to the choir…. @1 already said it. Teabaggers don’t care about facts or reality. They’re pissy and cranky because they lost the election and they’re gonna whine about it for the next 3 to 7 years. Facts are irrelevant.

  25. Also, from CBO Director Doug Elmendorf’s blog (emphasis mine):

    …On the health care and revenue side, the reconciliation proposal and H.R. 3590 would, among other things, establish a mandate for most residents of the United States to obtain health insurance; set up insurance exchanges through which certain individuals and families could receive federal subsidies to substantially reduce the cost of purchasing that coverage; significantly expand eligibility for Medicaid; substantially reduce the growth of Medicare’s payment rates for most services (relative to the growth rates projected under current law); impose an excise tax on insurance plans with relatively high premiums; and make various other changes to the federal tax code, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.

    CBO and JCT [the Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate that by 2019, the combined effect of enacting H.R. 3590 and the reconciliation proposal would be to reduce the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured by about 32 million, leaving about 23 million nonelderly residents uninsured (about one-third of whom would be unauthorized immigrants). Under the legislation, the share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage would rise from about 83 percent currently to about 94 percent…

  27. Also, paraphrasing a commenter on another blog:

    Before: (1) Uninsured person gets sick. (2) Uninsured person waits it out until health is in crisis & goes to the emergency room. (3) Hospital bill is huge, and most likely unpaid with cascading consequences in the economy.

    After: (1) Newly insured person gets sick. (2) Newly insured goes to doctor at earliest opportunity. (3) Newly insured gets better. (4) Having avoided bank foreclosure, newly insured person goes back to work, goes shopping for the kids, pays taxes.

  28. Come on dude, Bin Ladin released another tape claiming to want to attack America again. Even though military forces aren’t even in the country this guy lives in, if we blow up enough brown people the muslims will all be gone right?

    And the military isn’t socialism, it’s corporate welfare. The defense contractors spend billions getting everyone scared, so the rhetoric becomes more defense less taxes. It’s an oxymoron to put those things together, you cannot increase the federal budget while advocating for lower taxes when we have a 12 trillion dollar debt. Getting elected on those ideas is dangerous, irresponsible and immature. Democrats raised taxes in this bill to pay for it, which I’m sure for many wasn’t an easy vote, and most of the criticism is from people who criticize pay as you go legislation. Stop spending money we don’t have if you think it’s a crime to pass on debt to your kids, and for pete’s sake raise taxes. Mr. Buffet still pays 15% to my 20%+, FAIL.

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