Well Said, Bernie Sanders!

[G-Man]

• I take it the one trillion figure from the CBO reflects direct costs of the wars. Besides continuing direct costs like veterans service and capital replacement, there will also be debt service costs on the additional borrowing on account of the initial direct costs.

• Well, I think Sanders and his supporters would agree with this entirely, though we'd all proceed to break down some on which legislation was reckless and shortsighted.

Actually, Jonathan, if you'd clicked my link instead of blindly arguing, you would've seen that the estimate included "war-related costs" including aid to the countries, diplomatic activities, and even some homeland security costs. Talking about debt service costs (when that's something that also applies to the huge mountain of NON-war-related debt) makes no sense. Your attempt to include unquantifiable costs such as "veterans service" and "capital replacement" when ryoder pointed out that defense spending has actually gone DOWN contributes nothing to your argument. Just face it, the FACT is that the "two unfunded wars" is a relatively small part of the total deficit. Bernie Sanders is just trying to tie the deficit to popular scapegoats (eeevil Bush!; the greedy rich!; reckless Wall street!) when the fact is that politicians such as himself (both Republicans AND Democrats, with Democrats holding the purse strings for the last 5 years) are the ones ultimately responsible for the deficit and our current crisis.