Spending Our Money

I know our wars have been very expensive, but I didn't realize how out of whack these costs were until I read an article by Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers. Here are some highlights:

• In one month we spend more on our wars than the annual budget for the EPA.
• We could launch six NASA flights for what it costs us each month for our wars.
• The Medicare drug benefit is quite generous and expensive, yet in three months of war we spend more than we do on the drug benefit in a year.
• In four months we spend more on wars than the annual budget of the State Department.
• The military spends $4.55 for a gallon of gas (that's more than I spent on the island of Martha's Vineyard). Plus they have to spend money to get it to the vehicles; that could increase costs twenty times.
• Afghanistan is a hot place weather-wise. It costs $20 billion a year to provide air conditioning for the troops. Over the past forty years we've spent $1 billion a year on Amtrak on average.
  
• The per-person cost in Afghanistan in FY2010 was $667,000; it increased in FY2011 and likely will increase next year.
  

Something is truly wrong with this picture.