While Cost of Living Soars and Healthcare Taken Away, Trump Spending $1 Billion Per Day in War of Choice With Iran

[Celerity]

“We can’t afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/what-s-the-cost-of-iran-war



With fresh reporting that the ongoing US assault on Iran could be costing $1 billion per day in taxpayer money, opposition lawmakers, candidates for office, and outside critics are ripping the Trump administration and his allies in Congress for the financial recklessness of the unlawful and unprovoked attack on the Iranian people. “We can’t afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?” asked Graham Platner, a Democrat running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collin of Maine in this year’s midterm elections, in a social media post Wednesday.

Hundreds of hospitals across the US, most of them in rural areas, are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or closure in the wake of Trump’s signing of a spending and tax giveaway bill last year that gave billions in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy while slashing healthcare, including Medicaid. Collins on Wednesday joined all but one member of the Republican caucus in the US Senate to vote down a War Powers Resolution that would have compelled Trump to cease military operations against Iran. Planter was responding to journalist Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic, who reported, citing a congressional official, that a “preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day.”



Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) expressed similar outrage to the figure. “This war is costing a billion dollars a day,” said Schatz. “In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime change war of choice.” An analysis by Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress published Tuesday estimates that the US costs since bombing raids were launched by the American and Israeli forces over the weekend easily exceed $5 billion. According to McManus:

In a March 2 press conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided a glimpse into the nature of operations thus far in Operation Epic Fury. Caine described the deployment of more than 100 aircraft, the use of Tomahawk missiles, and attacks on more than 1,000 targets in just the first day of operations. Utilizing Brown University’s “Costs of War” project cost estimates of previous operations in the region—including Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran last June and engaging the Houthis in Yemen—it is likely that the operations Caine described alone would cost more than $4 billion.

snip

[malaise]

1. I am watching a discussion about this on AlJazeera right now

The Chinese must be laughing

[BlueTsunami2018]

2. That's the whole point.

There’s no profit in helping people. There’s no profit in giving healthcare, food, housing and education to people, even though it’s our money.

How many times must the cycle repeat for people to get it?

Capitalism is the problem. It’s always been the problem. It will always be the problem.

[malaise]

3. Ding ding

Last edited Fri Mar 6, 2026, 06:41 AM - Edit history (1)

The military contractors are meeting at the WH today

[niyad]

5. I wonder what thank you gifts they will be bringing.

[Harker]

6. Frankincense, myrrh, and a gold telephone.

[malaise]

7. The golden

carrots. 😀

[popsdenver]

18. AND

Capitalism at it's core is: CORPORATIONS who have backed & financed this whole Republican CABAL since Reagan.......

I predict, down the line, that the United States of America, will be renamed....The United Corporations of America....

[niyad]

4. Disgusted KNR

[Emile]

8. Social Security needs more funding,

but Republicans don't give a shit.

Republican platform: Tax cuts for people who don't pay taxes, and endless wars.

[Joinfortmill]

9. Jeezus. Impeach this motherf*cker.

[Kid Berwyn]

10. At least we'll have Armageddon.

And that should stay with us for ever, so very deservedly for some.

[MissouriDem47]

11. This war

This war should be called what it is: The Trump War

[Ray Bruns]

12. It seems that there's always money for war.

[dalton99a]

13. Kick

[kimbutgar]

14. And the Reich wing media will never report this to the magaloons who will still think the 🍊🐖💩 is the greatest!

And the economy is booming the the totally illegal war is going well and American is great now!

So Orwellian !

[gfarber]

15. Price Of War

There once was a war priced per day,
A billion in taxes to spray;
While hospitals plead,
For the care that we need,
The bombs get the budget, they say.

A candidate running in Maine
Asked why we bankroll all this pain:
“If wards cannot stay,
Yet bombs get a day—
What sense does this spending contain?”

The Senate was urged to restrain
The strikes raining down upon Iran;
But most said “no need,”
And continued the deed—
War powers dismissed with a plan.

A senator fumed at the cost,
“What healthcare for millions we’ve lost!
In one month’s campaign
Of this needless war’s strain,
More billions abroad will be tossed.”

A hundred warplanes took flight,
With missiles and targets in sight;
A thousand sites hit,
At a cost that won’t quit—
Four billion or more in one night.

Analysts counted the score
Of raids that had started the war:
Five billion at least
Spent quick in the east—
And the meter keeps climbing for more.

© 2026 Glen Farber. All Rights Reserved.

[relogic]

16. Can't wait to hear...

about those unaccounted, untraceable, bulging pallets of cash regularly arriving as they did in Iraq way back in earlier invasion adventures of Presidential eerily, unjustified, oil, preemptive safety, regime change, …the usual lies. I’m so relieved cash is still king. It greases the MIC billionaires here and there.

The comfort I get to know the country is in good hands while it crumbles within because capitalism is safe makes the hot air lifting my elated balloon burst through the pinholes from their cruel pellets.

[Ol Janx Spirit]

17. Wars only cost money under Democratic presidents don't you know?

Remember how under GW the war in Iraq didn't cost a thing?

The most obvious way in which the true cost of this war was kept hidden was with the use of supplemental appropriations to fund the occupation. By one estimate, 70% of the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008 were funded with supplemental or emergency appropriations approved outside the Pentagon's annual budget. These appropriations allowed the Bush administration to shield the Pentagon's budget from the cuts otherwise needed to finance the war, to keep the Pentagon's pet programs intact and to escape the scrutiny that Congress gives to its normal annual regular appropriations.

With the Iraq war treated as an "off the books" expense, the Pentagon was allowed to keep spending on high-end military equipment and cutting-edge technology. In fiscal terms, it was as if the messy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were never happening.

More fundamentally, the Bush administration masked the cost of the war with deficit spending to ensure that the American people would not face up to its costs while President Bush was in office. Despite their recent discovery of outrage over the national debt, the Republicans followed the advice of Vice-President Dick Cheney that "deficits don't matter" and spent freely on domestic programs throughout the Bush years. The Bush administration encouraged the American people to keep spending and "enjoy life", while the government paid for the occupation of Iraq on a credit card they hoped never to have to repay.
https://archive.globalpolicy.org/pmscs/52336-how-the-us-public-was-defrauded-by-the-hidden-costs-of-the-iraq-war.html

I fully expect this "war" will be "free" too. You know, until a Democrat is back in the White House and then they'll have to pay for it all....

[leftstreet]

19. DURec

[Aussie105]

20. Dedicated Republican voters and rusted on MAGAts must be getting the message by now?

I'm hopeful.

[BigmanPigman]

21. "Nothing changes, everything stays the same".

That was the theme of a Children's Book I used to read to my 1st grade students for 15 years. I could not agree more with this. I hope my students understood the bigger picture. I tried to make the discussions meaningful and at their level of understanding and making personal connections.

People rarely learn from history or the mistakes we have made for thousands of years. Life is not fair and never will be. No wonder I am a misanthrope at this point in my life. The smartest decision I ever made was when I chose not to have children. I'd be ridden with guilt. People suck!