Here’s How Much Just One Week of Trump’s Iran War Cost Us
Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left
Summary
The Pentagon estimates that it spent more than $11.3 billion in the first week of Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran. And every cent of that was spent without congressional approval. During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Pentagon officials told lawmakers that the cost of the first six days of America’s aerial bombing campaign exceeded $11.3 billion—not including the cost of the buildup ahead of the strikes, multiple outlets reported. The Pentagon previously estimated it spent $5.6 billion on munitions alone during the first two days of the war—significantly dwarfing the Pentagon’s preliminary cost estimate of $1 billion per day. Some GOP lawmakers said they’d received estimates that were closer to $2 billion per day. Elaine McCusker, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense during the first Trump administration, estimated that it cost an additional $630 million to assemble the largest force of U.S. military assets to the Middle East in decades before the first shot was even fired. Meanwhile, a Tomahawk cruise missile, like the one the U.S. military reportedly used in a deadly strike on an Iranian girls’ primary school, costs $2.2 million each. It may be worth keeping these figures in mind as the Trump administration argues it doesn’t have enough money to make health care more affordable. This exorbitant spending on a military campaign the American people do not support and their representatives did not authorize cancels out billions supposedly saved by sweeping cost-cutting measures. In order to fund his war, Trump has laid waste to federal programs.Let’s do some quick math: The $1.1 billion Trump rescinded from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the $7 billion from foreign aid, added to the $2.7 billion gutted from medical research and the $500 million slashed from food banks, is roughly equivalent to the $11.3 billion the Trump administration has spent bombing Iran. Or to put it more simply: In his first year back in office, Trump disrupted at least $12 billion toward K-12 education. Rather than fund schools, the U.S. bombed them.
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