I asked a Tea Party guy, "How can the government prevent abortion?" He said, "We need to force women to view their unborn child with an ultrasound picture." I asked, "So, a welfare queen gets knocked up, has no money, who is going to pay for the ultrasound?" The Tea Party guy retorted, "She must take a long look at that picture of her baby!" You mean, "So, the US government will need to hire 'minders' to make sure the women sees the ultrasound?" The Tea Party guy said, "Here's what you don't understand, we can have a tax cut to pay for it all; after all, tax cuts increase revenues!"

Additionally, guess who liberated Auschwitz, and what would that have meant had we not aided the USSR in WWII. You see, the Tea Party's blind faith that they have in the Republican propaganda machine will lead America down the wrong path. It's a slam dunk!

Republicans promise that opting out of Social Security will bring great benefits to the young ones who would then be able to invest their social security money into the stock market? Here's what Republicans said about moving US military personnel from pensions to private 401k plans. "Wall Street is a ponzi scheme" or "US soldiers perform a dangerous task and need to be protected." Why is the stock market a great thing for people opting out of social security but not a great thing to replace the statist/socialistic military pension plans?

The annual budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs has more than doubled since 2003 to a requested $132 billion for fiscal 2012. That amount is expected to rise sharply over the next four decades as lingering health problems for veterans become more serious as they grow older. Costs for Vietnam veterans did not peak until 30 or 40 years after the end of the war, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “We will have a vast overhang in domestic costs for caring for the wounded and covering retirement expenditure of the war fighters,” said Loren Thompson, a policy expert with the Lexington Institute. “The U.S. will continue to incur major costs for decades to come.”

Caring for veterans, more than 2 million of them, could alone reach $1 trillion, according to Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, in Congressional testimony in July. More than 32,000 soldiers were wounded in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Altogether, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost the U.S. between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. The U.S. has already spent $2 trillion on the wars after including debt interest and the higher cost of veterans’ disabilities.

Those costs include interest payments on the billions borrowed to fund the war; the cost of maintaining military bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain to defend Iraq or reoccupy the country if the Baghdad government unravels; and the expense of using private security contractors to protect U.S. property in the country and to train Iraqi forces.

Over a 50-year period, that comes to $80 billion annually. Near the start of the war, the U.S. Defense Department estimated the war would cost $50 billion to $80 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was dismissed in 2002 after suggesting the price of invading and occupying Iraq could reach $200 billion. “The direct costs for the war were about $800 billion, but the indirect costs, the costs you can’t easily see, that payoff will outlast you and me,” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank, and a former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan.

Iraq war ends with a $4 trillion IOU-Veterans’ health care costs to rise sharply over the next 40 years http://www.marketwatch.com/story/iraq-war-ends-with-a-4-trillion-iou-2011-12-15 The nine-year-old Iraq war came to an official end late 2011, but paying for it will continue for decades until U.S. taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $4 trillion.

The annual budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs has more than doubled since 2003 to a requested $132 billion for fiscal 2012. That amount is expected to rise sharply over the next four decades as lingering health problems for veterans become more serious as they grow older. Costs for Vietnam veterans did not peak until 30 or 40 years after the end of the war, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “We will have a vast overhang in domestic costs for caring for the wounded and covering retirement expenditure of the war fighters,” said Loren Thompson, a policy expert with the Lexington Institute. “The U.S. will continue to incur major costs for decades to come.”

Caring for veterans, more than 2 million of them, could alone reach $1 trillion, according to Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, in Congressional testimony in July. More than 32,000 soldiers were wounded in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Altogether, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost the U.S. between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. The U.S. has already spent $2 trillion on the wars after including debt interest and the higher cost of veterans’ disabilities.

The annual budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs has more than doubled since 2003 to a requested $132 billion for fiscal 2012. That amount is expected to rise sharply over the next four decades as lingering health problems for veterans become more serious as they grow older. Costs for Vietnam veterans did not peak until 30 or 40 years after the end of the war, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “We will have a vast overhang in domestic costs for caring for the wounded and covering retirement expenditure of the war fighters,” said Loren Thompson, a policy expert with the Lexington Institute. “The U.S. will continue to incur major costs for decades to come.”