Opportunity cost

From Bob Herbert, who talks about estimates made by a Congressional committee:

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more.

...[M]oney spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers.

The incredible amount of money spent on the Iraq war has rendered absurd any argument coming from a Republican that we must reign in domestic spending. Whatever mechanism is being used to finance the war can obviously also be used to finance anything else, including domestic programs--and everyone knows this. Moreover, since the Republicans never seem to acknowledge that there is any economic downside to this excessive spending on Iraq, they forfeit the ability to lodge similar complaints against domestic spending.

I really think that--for better or for worse--the Republicans have unwittingly opened the door to a new era of gigantic government programs. Ten years ago, universal health care was a pipe-dream--in these days of trillion-dollar elective wars, it's looking doable. The socialists can thank George W. Bush.