The cost for the Iraq war had been calculated a hundred different ways. Depending on what you were trying to prove, the cost of the was was either lower than the Bush administration had projected, or higher than could be imagineable. Before the war began, administration officials predicted that the conflict would cost approximately $50 billion. By the end of its thrd year, the cost had escalated to at least $380 billion. True costs, opponents argued, were in excess of $1.3 trillion, when health care and disability benefits for U.S. soldiers, rebuilding costs in Iraq, and allocations for equipment and supplies were added. Essentially financed through deficit spending, interest payments alone, over time, were projected to top $100 billion.
Depending on the state you lived in, the cost to taxpayers could be somewhere between 5 and 10 billion dollars. If you lived in a city of approximately a quarter-million population, you could expect your city's share of the cost to be about $175 million. If you lived in a large metropolitan area, your city's share could be three-quarters of a billion dollars, or more. All of this money had to come from somewhere, and it usually resulted in fewer services being provided by municipal governments. Thus, it came as no surprise when many cities along the east coast announced they had little money to spend on search-and-rescue, community care, or reconstruction efforts. Washington, DC and New York City were broke before being struck by a gargantuan hurricane. On the west coast, Los Angeles suffered the same economic turmoil.
In the fall of 2006, the National Priorities Project (NPP), estimated the cost of the Iraq war "based on the analysis of legislation appropriating funding...and Congressional Research Service reports." NPP was quick to point out that those costs included only incremental budgetary costs, not interest, or future costs related to the war.
For several years, it had been widely rumored that the Bush administration was working "off the books", intentionally not including billions of dollars of "war costs" in the federal budgets. It was the same kind of shell game that large corporations used to soften the impact of quarterly losses. The federal government had prosecuted some companies for such deceptive bookkeeping practices, often sending CEOs to jail and imposing massive fines. Of course, the government could violate the same standards, and who would prosecute the government??
O.U.T.R.A.G.E. had engaged the services of several reputable economics experts and analysts from all over the world to take an in-depth look at the true cost of the war. It was important for the U.S.A. to know exactly how deeply in debt it was. Obviously, it was time to cut up the country's credit cards and establish a budget on which Congress would be forced to live. With the 'fat cats' now dead and buried, it was up to those new incoming Congressional candidates to understand the need for intense and frugal measures. "A billion here and billion there..." wasn't going to work anymore. It was time for Congress to start pinching pennies.
The concept of taxpayers sending all their money to Washington, and then letting Washington reallocate it at its whim, was an archaic - and, now, more than ever - and worthless idea. Washington would no longer be given free access to the federal purse strings. The 'fat cats' in Congress would go on a starvation diet.......