What Would You Do With A Billion Dollars

via Crooks and Liars:

While there is some disagreement on the idea of troop deadlines for US soldiers in Iraq, all sides seem to be on board with the amount included in the bill to fund the war.

Including the $124.2 billion bill, the total cost of the Iraq war may reach $456 billion in September, according to the National Priorities Project, an organization that tracks public spending.

The amount got us wondering: What would $456 billion buy?

You can take a glimpse of what it could buy with Boston.com's gallery.

I find it funny that while we are more then willing to give $400 billion for this illegal war we tighten our purse strings when it comes to helping our OWN folks here at home devastated by natural disasters, which the government is at fault in certain occasions (see levees).

More than 20 months after the Katrina catastrophe, tens of thousands of houses remain vacant, in part because of administrative delays in the aid program, the largest single source of direct federal help for homeowners. To date, only 16,000 of 130,000 applicants have received money.

Now, ICF Consulting, the Fairfax firm hired to administer the claims as part of Louisiana's Road Home program, projects that the allotted aid budget of $6.9 billion will fall $2.9 billion short of the claims from homeowners who have been promised checks.

Read the whole story at The Washington Post.

It is shameful that we give more to other countries when a natural disaster hits then we do to ourselves. It's almost two years later and people are STILL living in FEMA trailers and that is inexcusable. We have no problem apparently throwing money to Haliburton, Blackwater, and other Haliburton subsidiaries, but when it comes to actually helping our own people there apparently is nothing to gain, no monetary reason to attempt restore their lives back before Katrina hit.

If I were the Democrats and want to get REALLY creative with the War Funding Bill and make it lethal to Republicans, add some pork that no one with a heart would object to. Add say $20 billion dollars of aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina and those who lost their homes in the recent tornadoes in Kansas. See what Bush's response to the bill is, sure it makes it even more political then it already is, but you can claim that you're at least trying to help people here while funding the war as well.