The Post reports this morning that President Bush is requesting an addition $42.3 billion to finance the war in Iraq in the 2008 fiscal year, bringing the total funding request for the year to $190 billion. Of course almost none of the Post readers has any idea how much money this is – yet the Post refuses to express its budget numbers in a way that would be meaningful to readers.
The 2008 request is equal to approximately 6.3 percent of projected spending for the year. It comes to $630 for every person in the country. By comparison, Congress proposed spending $7 billion a year more on the State Children’s Heath Insurance Program (SCHIP) than President Bush requested. This difference is approximately equal to what President Bush will spent on the war in Iraq in two weeks.
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