For perspective, though, I would like to see the OMBs report in hand. . . .

*************************************

So this morning George Bush is making his case at the UN for other
countries' participation in Iraq. At home he is trying to make the case
for $87 billion to be spent by the federal government.

Now $87 billion is a big number. For those on the list who work in the
foreign assistance business, you will likely have had some experience in
having to 'justify' your program and its budget because money spent on
any type of foreign assistance program, particularly for those funded by
the USG, one is constantly reminded that these are scarce taxpaper
dollars that might equally be put to an alternative use. Evaluating the
opportunity cost of public funds is generally a worthwhile exercise.
However in that regard I thought to consider a few comparisons to see
how $87 billion in Iraq measures up as compared to the use of federal
dollars and general development expenditures in other areas.

turns out, $87,000,000,000 is-



45% more than ALL planned federal spending for the US Department of
Education in the United States (FY04 $60 billion)*



9 times the amount spent to operate ALL worldwide operations of the
United States State Department (FY04- $9.7 billion)*



5 times ALL forms of US foreign assistance- this includes, but is not
limited to, the entire budget of USAID, ALL USDA food aid, ALL Peace
Corps operations worldwide, ALL contributions to the United Nations, and
ALL contributions to the Multilateral Development Banks (Total FY04 $17
billion, of which $4.4 billion (26%) is for foreign military financing)*


I've got to say that one again, it's 5 times the amount of all of these
programs put together.



7 times the entire budget for all worldwide operations of the United
Nations in all 191 member nations. (UN budget for 2003 $12 billion)**



4.5 times the total lending to all 184 member countries by the World
Bank in 2002 ($19 billion)***



$310 for every American. For a family of 4 that's $1,240- a sum far
larger than any 'average' family might expect to receive from the Bush
tax cut.



$3,780 for every person in Iraq (pop. est. 23 million). Even with a
gross back-of-the-envelope estimate of per capita GDP in Iraq ranging
between $700-1,500, this is several orders of magnitude of the entire
country's GDP.



* Source: Office of Management and Budget, the Executive Office of the
President

** The United Nations Office of Programme Planning and Budget

*** The World Bank, Annual Report 2003