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IPFS News Link • Economy - Economics USA

Mayors to Obama: Bring War Dollars Home

• Peter Dreier, Huffington Post

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost the residents of Los Angeles over $1.8 billion this year. That's the amount of tax dollars that Los Angeles has sent to the federal government and will be spent on these two wars, according to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group. New Yorkers will shell out $5.7 billion to pay for U.S. troops, weapons, and supplies in these two countries. The cost to Atlanta taxpayers is over $203 million; Philadelphians will pay $612 million; in Milwaukee, the price tag is $221 million. The taxpayers of Boise, Idaho -- a city with 205, 707 people -- will spend $75 million in these two war zones this year.

This week, the nation's mayors, desperate for dollars to keep their cities afloat, demanded: we want our money back! At its annual conference in Baltimore, the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution calling for an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying that the money could be put to better use at home. The resolution calls on the president and Congress to "bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy and reduce the federal debt."

 

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