Screams & non-screams from the GOP

The Republican Party of No continues to scream about what they think would be the cost of health care reform.

But you never hear a complaining peep from them about the Bush tax cuts for the rich that cost $1.8 trillion -- which is twice the cited health reform costs.

And they don't groan, much less scream, about this kind of spending:

* The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost over $1 trillion to date. (Under Bush, they cost each American family more than $25,000.) This year will add between $200 billion and $250 billion.

* We have 16 intelligence agencies (with 200,000 employees) that eat up $75 billion.

* Half of the world's military spending is done by the Pentagon. That's 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues.

* We are paying for 750 U.S. military bases in 50 countries.

* The U.S. keeps building or contracting new prisons. About 2.3 million people are now behind bars (1 in every 99) - a larger proportion of the population than in any other nation in the world. The prison system's price tag is more than $60 billion - up from just $9 billion two decades ago

* US detention centers hold about 300,000 migrants. Here in Tucson, the feds pay $6,000 to $12,000 each day to private attorneys who supposedly represent a steady flow of chained migrants who are automatically deported anyway. Just up the road at little Eloy, migrant detention is costing taxpayers between $9 million and $11 million a month. Private prisons are raking in the money in over half the states.

* The walls on our southern border -- breached over 3,000 times -- have cost about $3.5 billion so far. A GAO report last year said it would cost $6.5 billion to maintain them over the next 20 years.

* In the last decade we have paid just one mercenary group, the thoroughly corrupt Blackwater/Xe corporation, well over $1 billion. (The Washington Post reported that "Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad overseeing more than 160,000 U.S. troops, makes roughly $180,000 a year, or about $493 a day. That comes out to less than half the fee charged by Blackwater for its senior manager of a 34-man security team.")

GOP, once again the grand old party of hypocrites.