U.S. Spending and Iraq

President Bush is back on the stump this week drumming again for support for the Iraq war. But in Congress, they're looking at the bill. Another $67 billion in supplemental spending — mainly for Iraq — is up for a vote this week. With soldiers' lives on the line and Iraq teetering, it will pass.

But the bill has grown and grown, while Iraq has moved closer to civil war than to stability. Hundreds of billions of scarce taxpayer dollars now spent on Iraq - $2 trillion by one count — and clearly more to come.

Sums so big for a war so inconclusive that it's fair to ask: what else might they have bought, for America's future and America's security?

Hear about Iraq by the numbers, and where else this massive investment might have gone.

Guests:

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Earth Institute at Columbia University. He was Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Project. He is author of "The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.";
Linda Bilmes, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget at the U.S. Department of Commerce, from 1999-2001. She is currently a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is co-author of "The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years after the Beginning of the Conflict."