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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (73916)	10/21/2009 1:27:01 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224749

How does CBO score the troop increase in Afghanistan? I'm not sure that it does. Should we increase taxes to fund that troop increase? No. Increasing taxes would be a foolish thing to do at this point (and to a lesser extent is usually a bad idea at any point, except perhaps if taxes are really low, or maybe if the economy is strong but the fiscal balance is really bad, but in that specific situation I'd look first to spending cuts). And the cost is going to be a tiny fraction of the cost of Obama's new medical care programs. Maybe in year one or two, the medical care program will cost less, but it just escalates from there, while the cost for additional soldiers in Afghanistan doesn't escalate, and eventually goes down (wars don't last forever). Eventually our forces will be out or mostly out of Afghanistan, while the new medical spending each year or at most two, will likely be more than the cost for the entire conflict in Afghanistan, or each years total defense budget.