While Cost of Living Soars and Healthcare Taken Away, Trump Spending $1 Billion Per Day in War of Choice With Iran [View all]

“We can’t afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/what-s-the-cost-of-iran-war



With fresh reporting that the ongoing US assault on Iran could be costing $1 billion per day in taxpayer money, opposition lawmakers, candidates for office, and outside critics are ripping the Trump administration and his allies in Congress for the financial recklessness of the unlawful and unprovoked attack on the Iranian people. “We can’t afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?” asked Graham Platner, a Democrat running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collin of Maine in this year’s midterm elections, in a social media post Wednesday.

Hundreds of hospitals across the US, most of them in rural areas, are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or closure in the wake of Trump’s signing of a spending and tax giveaway bill last year that gave billions in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy while slashing healthcare, including Medicaid. Collins on Wednesday joined all but one member of the Republican caucus in the US Senate to vote down a War Powers Resolution that would have compelled Trump to cease military operations against Iran. Planter was responding to journalist Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic, who reported, citing a congressional official, that a “preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day.”



Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) expressed similar outrage to the figure. “This war is costing a billion dollars a day,” said Schatz. “In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime change war of choice.” An analysis by Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress published Tuesday estimates that the US costs since bombing raids were launched by the American and Israeli forces over the weekend easily exceed $5 billion. According to McManus:

In a March 2 press conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided a glimpse into the nature of operations thus far in Operation Epic Fury. Caine described the deployment of more than 100 aircraft, the use of Tomahawk missiles, and attacks on more than 1,000 targets in just the first day of operations. Utilizing Brown University’s “Costs of War” project cost estimates of previous operations in the region—including Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran last June and engaging the Houthis in Yemen—it is likely that the operations Caine described alone would cost more than $4 billion.

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