What would you buy with $3 trillion dollars?

Sorry I went AWOL on the blog last week. A helpful reader (my only?) reminded me that the blog was getting stale. Anyhow, then I saw this: http://3trillion.org. Think you can spend $3 trillion better than President Bush?

“Just counting the zeroes on the $3 trillion price tag of the Iraq War is enough to induce hyperventilation. But what does $3 trillion really mean? It’s difficult even to comprehend a number that big. Well, try filling your shopping cart with what the cost of the Iraq War could buy: healthcare for every American? A new home for every subprime borrower now facing foreclosure? An Ivy League university? You haven’t even gotten started.”

-Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War

Browse through our departments or use the search box to find a product. Once you've found something you like, simply add it to your cart. If you want to add more than one, keep on clicking—after all, our government just loves to spend spend spend. (Can't locate something you want? Simply "add a product" and follow the steps.) When you're all finished, proceed to the checkout, where you'll be able to complete your order and e-mail your virtual gifts to friends.

$3 TRILLION isn't just how much the Iraq War will cost our government, it's how much it will cost our sputtering economy. When the Bush administration launched this war, they claimed Americans would not have to make sacrifices. They even cut taxes with the help of a Republican-led Congress, rather than raising them as had been done historically in times of war. According to Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War, we're fighting an unnecessary war on borrowed money. The war has caused our skyrocketing national debt. And more than anything else, the war has caused our recession.

Here's how $3 trillion breaks down:

• $526 billion — borrowed money poured into Iraq so far
• $615 billion — total interest costs for taxpayers
• $280 billion — to rebuild our military
• $590 billion — disability benefits and health care for Iraq veterans
• $1.5 trillion — estimated costs through 2017

So I tried to spend $3 trillion, but even with items like world peace, healthcare for all Americans, reusable shopping bags, rebuilding New Orleans, etc., I still couldn't make it.

It's a great website to help give a bit more of a sense of what a waste this war has been in dollars (not counting lost lives - Iraqi, American and other, families torn apart, a country's infrastructure destroyed, etc.).

So as you think about who you want to help lead our country for the next 4-8 years, maybe thinking about the costs of the war will be informative.