A $10 billion fund to prevent foreclosures, funding for roads and bridges etc. Many things happened during the presidency, which were outright mishandled by the Government. “Cash for clunkers” completely ruined the used car market, sky rocketing the price of used vehicles, the utter collapse of the housing market, and unemployment rates skyrocketed. The Obama jobs act of 2011 was a total disaster. It was marketed towards the citizens of the United States as a tool to “put Americans back to work” without adding “a dime to the deficit”(Epstein, 2013).
Counterargument: While it is true that Service member will likely die in conflicts protecting the United States, they should only be placed in a dangerous situation when it is absolutely essential to the safety of America. Iraq’s threat to the United States was very low compared to other countries at the time of the invasion. 4,316 American deaths and 31,342 Americans wounded in Iraq as of June 18, 2009. Because the war has cost billions of taxpayer dollars. (UA: Wasting money is bad) The Iraq war has cost $679,593,000,000 dollars as of June
By 1986 the Soviet economy suffered from both hidden inflation and pervasive supply shortages which were aggravated by an increasingly open black market that undermined the official economy. In addition, the USSR spent a lot on the military, they lost over 15,000 soldiers in the war against Afghanistan which had cost them $8 billion per annum. They also overspent in the Reagan years, the defence spending increased by $32.6 billion as they tried to compete with the USA STAR WARS programme but could not compete. Also, the USSR spent $40 billion propping up Communist Governments throughout the world. The USSR was left behind by the new wave of industrialisation as it was based on information technology, they were left desperate for Western technology.
Both wars cost vast amounts of money and lives that affected families nation wide. In the Iraq War 4,001 U.S. troops have so far been killed and 29,320 have been seriously wounded (White) contrasting with the Vietnam War that lost 58,000 U.S. troops were killed and 304,000 seriously wounded (Vietnam). However bad those numbers may seem, looking at the U.S. government's spending in Iraq and Vietnam will make you cringe. For the Vietnam War the American government spent in total $150 billion (White) however for the Iraq War, they spent over $600 billion of U.S. tax payers funds, and President Bush has requested another $200 billion for 2008, which would bring the cumulative to a grand total of $800 billion, the average monthly spending in Iraq coming out to about $12 billion (White). The Vietnam War suffered in casualties opposed to debt in the Iraq War but both wars had and still have an extreme pull on the economy and left many in a struggle financially.
As the 12th year of the post-9/11 wars begins, the toll of war in human lives and US federal dollars continues to grow. When President Barack Obama withdrew uniformed American troops from Iraq last year and announced substantial troop withdrawals in Afghanistan, he concluded in a UN speech that “The tide of war is receding.” Hundreds of billions of dollars, however, will continue to be allocated for or because of the wars. So, too, will the human costs of these conflicts reverberate for years to come in the United States and the war zones. There is no turning the page on the wars, and there is even more need as a result to understand what those wars’ consequences are and will be. What we do know, without debate, is that the wars begun eleven years ago have been tremendously painful for millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and the United States, and economically costly as well.
2012 Presidential Election The 2012 Presidential Election was deemed a near defeat for Democratic President Barack Hussein Obama and a very close victory for Republican opponent, and former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. It was also one of the more critical elections in United States history considering that the country was still under heavy stress in dealing with the economy, mainly with the unemployment rate at an average high of 8.3% (US Department of Labor Statistics.) but also following the United States federal deficit at $1.01 trillion dollars. We were also concerned with an estimated amount of 1,388,028 soldiers that were deployed overseas at the time (VetFriends.) Social Security was another big issue at the time with a rising number of $110,000 (ssa.gov.
Over the last several years, wait time and corruption inside of the Veterans Affairs Health Care administration have lead to massive delays, with some patients never even being seen. In some of the worse cases, such delays have resulted in death. One such example is in Phoenix, where “40 veterans died while waiting to see a doctor, 1700 were confirmed to be on a secret waiting list, and others?f average wait times were almost 4 months. Yet the hospital administrator was paid a $9,000 bonus for her 'quality outcomes'.”(Vliet 34). The source of the issue is that there are too many veterans needing medical assistance and not enough resources to manage the demand in a timely manner, which causes overcrowding in Veteran medical centers country wide.
Huge increase in US military spending has been one of the factors contributing to the deterioration of the American economy since 2001. (Billions) What is confined to this disagreement with the costs of such a world power are the negative attitudes towards militarism in a more vague sense. Western militarism frequently overlaps by means of civilian functions disturbing attitudes to militarism in general. As a result, when revelations come out that some Western armies may have trained dictators and human rights violators, the reasoning given may possibly be quite astonishing. (Anup) As an extension of such aggression in anger towards our own government is the amount of jobs lost when our government considers that moving away from military manufacturing would not necessarily end in the loss of jobs rather a decrease for cuts in other areas.
The United States is in a big hole economically and as of now, it doesn’t look too bright for the future either. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama are to blame for this crisis. Bush started off by spending quite a bit of money, and Obama has done next to nothing to help
The number one cited concern for opponents concerns the initial investment costs of developing such a system. Given the status of the economy and the government’s financial problems, and an immediate investment of an estimated $634 billion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years, the United States simply cannot afford to implement a system in the immediate future (CATO, 2011). A lesser concern, but valid nonetheless, is the idea that government mandated healthcare will eliminate the private healthcare industry and reduce in a lack of incentive to pursue medical professions due to lower earnings and more government control (2011). The most significant concern is what role will politics play in government sponsored universal healthcare. With heated issues such as abortion, stem-cell research, and even assisted death, how can the government ensure medical policies do not change as fast as politicians in