This post is in the process of revision, as I struggle through more conflicting facts and figures.  I wish the numbers were simpler, smaller, easier to make a point about.  The complexity, of course, is as much the problem as the sure-handed oversimplifications that are often offered instead of real discourse.  I’ll give a heads up in a later post when I’ve learned enough to make this as comprehensive and understandable as I’d like it to be.

DRAFT ONE

There are two numbers that should be part of the discussion as a TV hypnotized America goes about choosing a new president.  2.4 trillion dollars– the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus the Bush tax cuts to the top 5%  (see below) and 1.1 trillion dollars, the projected deficit for 2012 (see fair and balanced source).  These numbers are largely unknown while politicians negotiate over how to economize on a scaled down New Deal safety net without raising additional revenues during these hard economic times.  

Why don’t Americans know these numbers?

The amount being spent for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, (excluding the projected cost of long term care for thousands of grievously disabled twenty and thirty year-old veterans) is $1,367,222,688,159 and counting — (source:  http://costofwar.com  )  Note that this figure excludes long term cost of caring for wounded veterans, which probably more than doubles the number.  A study at Brown University concluded the total cost of the wars will be as much as 4 trillion.

Lost revenue in tax breaks to the the top 5% of Americans during the more than decade of the Bush Tax Cuts:  $1,034,424,338,581, with 70% of that, or 700 billion dollars, going to the top 1%. (source)

This sum, wars plus tax cuts, a conservative two trillion four hundred billion dollars, must be part of any serious discussion of the deficit and how to fix it.   This 2.4 trillion should be a number every American can cite when discussing the responsibility of our current president for the grim economic backdrop to what Bill Moyers referred to as the auction for the presidency.

But further research shows how difficult it is to present the exact numbers that all Americans should know.  The 2012 deficit is different than the cumulative deficit, which is different than the national debt.   Look at this graph, if you want your head to spin, 

We talk in terms of billions, we might as well be talking in terms of gazillions or quadrillions.  These abstractions are so large that the eight or nine billion dollars that disappeared in Iraq, under the watchful nose of  L. Paul Bremmer III,  Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, early in the occupation of Iraq, slips quietly under the radar while politicians seriously debate cutting the heating subsidies to just over the poverty line old people here in the US.  It would save millions of dollars, they argue.  And old people can always put on sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves, parkas, etc.  It’s easier to stay warm than to stay cool, think of it that way.

Partisans of Mr. Romney, including PAC-genius Karl Rove, the man our previous president called “The Architect” ( as well, apparently, as “Turd Blossom”) will begin waving the flag to beat the band as they speak quickly of how the Bush administration saved us all from certain destruction by Al Qaeda (there was no second catastrophic terrorist attack on their watch, after all) and rewarded the job-creators by giving them even more incentive to create jobs.  

Then they’ll quickly change the subject, since George W. Bush, for all the good he did for his constituency, is not the poster child for smaller, smarter government, nor any kind of fiscal conservative.  And, if pressed, they might be tempted to concede that Mr. Bush did drain the record surplus and run up a record deficit like a car collecting trust fund baby in a Rolls Royce dealership buying one in every color, before helicoptering off to the Porsche dealer.

As Bill Moyers pointed out, during the excitement among many after Obama’s election as president, Barack Obama will disappoint.  Every president does, he continued.  No sadder, truer words were spoken about that election.  I have often wondered about the forces that constrain the president, a great salesman and educator, from educating and selling higher goals and policies than the ones he’s shot for.

“He doesn’t want to get shot,” says one friend.

“He doesn’t want to piss off his top supporters on Wall Street, he needs their millions for the billion dollar reelection campaign he’s going to have to wage,” says another.

“He is a pragmatist,” says another.

“He doesn’t stand for real change, he stands, like anyone with the backing to become president, for the status quo,” says another.

Be assured that Karl Rove will do everything in his considerable power to make Mitt Romney the next president of the United States.  His former protegee will be left quietly on the sidelines, since discussion of his record would cloud the primary issue: that radical Barack Obama is a weak and misguided president who got us into this terrible financial mess and then had only failed ideas for how to get us out of it.