one trillion dollars: cue pinkie to mouth

One trillion dollars is a lot of money.  So much money that you could buy everyone in the state of California a Subaru, and still have money left over.  Fox News has claimed that the Obama stimulus package will actually cost more than the eight-year Iraq War.  These accusations, although most definitely false, do assert that the stimulus bill is a lot of money – hundreds of billions of dollars.  However, I don’t think the stimulus bill is a good comparison to the Iraq war.  I mean, the Bush Administration tried several stimulus packages, but those are not talked about in the comparison.  And of course we don’t know what Republicans would have done if they had a majority in office.  Maybe they would have implemented a stimulus similar to the Bush Administration. The accusations about the stimulus seem to be more over politics than anything else.  Similarly, the Democrats made an outcry over the Bush stimulus.  In addition, Republicans, even if they did provide another stimulus, would not have spent as much money as the Democrats, right?

I think a better comparison would be to compare the Iraq War with the new Health Care bill.  Both are stated to cost around one trillion dollars.  And both Democrats and Republicans seem to reprove the decision of the other.  The choice is then between an unwinnable, unjustified, fake war, that was started under false pretenses of securing WMD that never existed, or a bill that is helping millions of people have health care coverage that normally would not have it.

Now I am not going to get into all the reasons why people hate the Health Care bill.  You know forcing people to have health coverage, a trillion dollars of tax payer’s money going to “welfare health care patrons”, etcetera.  Nor am I going to get into why the Health Care Bill is good: it covers donut holes, pre-existing coverage, and gives people a chance to have health care when they’ve never had a chance before.  Nope, not going to do that.  Just the basics.  If you had one trillion dollars and you could spend it on either the Iraq War or health care, which would you choose?  And no, the money couldn’t be spent on option C - the improvement of public education.   Or option D – not spending the money in the first place.  Then the American taxpayers could do what they do best – spend the money on themselves.