Can't trust govt. on cost of bailout

We listen to the radio, read the papers and watch CNN, aghast and shocked that the federal government is proposing an economic rescue plan unprecedented in its scope. What really gets to us is the numbers: $700 billion!

What a shocking amount - or so we think. Keep in mind, folks, these are our same fearless leaders (Bush and Co.) who at one time estimated the "War on Terror" at variable costs of $50 billion to $60 billion.

Let's do some math: Upfront costs of the war (approximately $16 billion per month) plus the costs hidden in the defense budget - money we'll need to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and material have been greatly depleted - brings the total tab of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to a staggering total that will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion. Right now, the war in Iraq alone costs us $556,522,615,922 (see nationalpriorities.org.)

As reported in The Washington Post on March 9, 2008 ("The Iraq war Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More,") "President Bush tried to sell the American people on the idea that we could have a war with little or no economic sacrifice. Even after the United States went to war, Bush and Congress cut taxes, especially on the rich - even though the United States already had a massive deficit. So the war had to be funded by more borrowing. By the end of the Bush administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the cumulative interest on the increased borrowing used to fund them, will have added about $1 trillion to the national debt."

That's not to forget or diminish in any way the nondollar costs this war is having on our country: 4,169 military casualties since the war began, and 30,642 wounded.

With early estimates on the war being so far off the mark of what experts now say will be a war effort costing us more than $3 trillion, why should we - in fact, how can we? - believe an administration that estimates an economic buyout at $700 billion?

We are in a situation now on a federal level that has been heard around kitchen tables in many American homes: "We just can't afford it."

We can't afford to pay for it, and we can't afford an administration that does not have a strict economic policy - one that will get us out of debt, out of Iraq, tell the people the truth, and get us back into being the country we used to be: budget surpluses and respect from the rest of the world.

Tara Little

Carpentersville