And the drum roll please:

Estimated Impact of the Stimulus Package on Employment and Economic Output

** Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent.

** Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points.

** Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and...

** Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what those amounts would have been otherwise.

So, if you ever hear folks say that the nearly $800 billion stimulus package (AARA) accomplished very little to nothing, you can now safely say, "Hogwash" right back to them and site this non-partisan report.

The report concludes thusly:

The effects of ARRA on output and employment are expected to gradually diminish during the second half of 2010 and beyond. The effects of ARRA on employment and unemployment are expected to lag slightly behind the effects on output; they are expected to wane gradually in 2011 and beyond.

Quite clearly AARA accomplished what was intended. It was a good and necessary action taken by our government and basically rescued the economy from total collapse.

And not one Republican voted for it. Remember that fact this coming November when stepping into that voting booth.

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Tags: ARRA, CBO, Congressional Budget Office, stimulus package

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Now this is precious:

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Tags: Cordoba House, Ground Zero Mosque, Jon Stewart

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The answer can be found in this new report compiled by the Congressional Research Service and

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans a staggering $1 trillion to date, second only in inflation-adjusted dollars to the $4 trillion price tag for World War II, when the United States put 16 million men and women into uniform and fought on three continents.

Got that? We've spent $1 trillion so far fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. $1 trillion. Borrowed from future generations because the Bush administration refused to pay for them responsibly by raising taxes. But why so expensive, you ask?

Still, 21st-century technology is an obvious explanation for why two relatively small (although long) wars in developing societies like Iraq and Afghanistan are so expensive. As Stephen Daggett, a specialist in defense policy and budgets, writes in the Congressional Research Service report, in the Revolutionary War "the most sophisticated weaponry was a 36-gun frigate that is hardly comparable to a modern $3.5 billion destroyer."

But that can't be all there is to this story, right?

A second look at the numbers shows another story underneath. In 2008, the peak year so far of war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, the costs amounted to only 1.2 percent of America’s gross domestic product. During the peak year of spending on World War II, 1945, the costs came to nearly 36 percent of G.D.P.

The reason is the immense growth, and seemingly limitless credit, of the United States economy over the last 65 years, as compared to the sacrifice and unity required to wring $4 trillion from a much smaller economy to wage the earlier war. To some historians, the difference is troubling.

Indeed, this is the crux of the problem:

"The army is at war, but the country is not," said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. "We have managed to create and field an armed force that can engage in very, very lethal warfare without the society in whose name it fights breaking a sweat." The result, he said, is "a moral hazard for the political leadership to resort to force in the knowledge that civil society will not be deeply disturbed."

A corollary is that taxes have not been raised to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan -- the first time that has happened in an American war since the Revolution, when there was not yet a country to impose them. Rightly or wrongly, that has further cut American civilians off from the two wars on the opposite side of the world.

Indeed it has: it seems that the lives of 20 year-olds like Lindsey Lohan are more important to Americans than these 20 somethings who gave their lives for their country just in the last week of July --> Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matt Weikert 29, Justus Bartelt 27, Dave Santos 21, Chase Stanley 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew King 23, Christopher Goeke 23 & Sheldon Tate 27.

Bumiller's article goes on:

Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "Americans were called upon by their leaders to pay higher taxes during a war, and grumbling or not grumbling, they did it," said Robert D. Hormats, the under secretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs and the author of "The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars."

In terms of costs per warrior, the current wars appear to be the most expensive ever, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Working independently of the Pentagon and of the Congressional study, and using computations based on the number of troops committed to the actual conduct of war at any one time, he estimates that the annual cost today is $1.1 million per man or woman in uniform in Afghanistan versus an adjusted $67,000 per year for troops in World War II and $132,000 in Vietnam.

Times, oh they have changed, that's for sure...

One last statistic from the article:

A quick calculation shows that the United States has been at war for 47 of its 230 years, or 20 percent of its history. Put another way, Americans have been at war one year out of every five.

"You know, it's a surprise to me that it's that high," said Mr. Daggett, who has focused on the cost, not length, of wars. "You think of war as not being the usual state."

One out of every five years we've been at war. Think about that, after you chew on the fact that we never paid for the Iraq or Afghanistan war. For the first time in our history, we borrowed money from our children to fight these wars of the past 8 years.

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Tags: Afghanistan, cost of war, Iraq, military budget

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