Mother Jones illustration; Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency/Getty
“It takes money to kill bad guys.”
That’s how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth justified reports that the Pentagon is requesting $200 billion in additional funding to pay for its offensive in Iran, where, as of this writing, more than $18 billion has already been spent to kill thousands, with no end in sight.
Here at Mother Jones, we started to wonder: If the Trump administration weren’t so hellbent on “death and destruction,” at a moment rife with rising inflation and recession concerns, what else could $200 billion deliver? A lot, it turns out. We broke down a few line items below.
2.8 million public school teacher salaries
2,857 luxury 737 jets, bedroom included
378 years of federal public broadcasting funding
500 more White House ballrooms
4 years of a fully-funded National Institutes of Health
2 million Kash Patel trips to Milan by private jet
16.2 years of IRS funding, at pre-Trump levels
40 percent of Greenland, if it were for sale
2,666 Melania sequels
16.9 TSA budgets
2 Warner Bros.
1,779,628 Washington Post salaries
182 million miniature busts of Mount Rushmore with Trump’s face added
2,341 Trump heads on the real Mount Rushmore, space permitting
200 years of free New York City buses
Refund 70 percent of the tariffs the Treasury Department collected illegally
Restore Trump’s cuts to clean energy projects, 6 times over
247 Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus
1.4 billion pairs of Florsheim dress shoes
6.6 years of fully funded school lunches for every public school student in America
3 years of dental coverage, finally included in Medicare Part B
4,347 birthday parades, road repairs included
A lifetime supply of period products more than 100 million Americans
2 Metaverses
1.4 years worth of annual ACA subsidies
100 Pentagon name changes
90 percent of Americans’ roughly $220 billion in medical debt
10 years of paid family leave funding
Approximately 1 tank of gas, when this is all over.
Correction, March 20: This article has been updated to clarify the total cost of ACA subsidies.