There's lots more where that came from. It isn't hard to figure out where Sanders would "pay for it" so long as you take as a given that he'd tax the fuck out of the wealthy. "Taxing the fuck out of the wealthy" has been the ultimate 3rd rail in American politics since Eisenhower, effectively, so it's borderline unthinkable, but it's an idea whose time has come. Here's another fun game - see if you can deal with the oh-shit-impossible budget crisis we face regularly while also, I dunno, making things suck less for students. It ain't at all hard if you abide by a few simple maxims: (1) raise taxes on the wealthy (2) cut defense spending. Wanna see my mind-breaker? That's a Delta IV Heavy. It's launching from SLC-6 at Vandenberg. It has a spy satellite on it that was put up for the specific purpose of spying on bin Laden's Abbotabad compound ahead of a Delta raid to cap his ass. You'll notice that there's nobody on the beach (there were actually maybe 30 of us) and it didn't make the news. Robert Byrd railed against this launch because... well, take it, Wiki: So the first thing is fuckin' $6.35 BILLION dollars for a satellite we've been launching since 1976. The next thing is that when Congress whined about it, the budget went down by 2 BILLION dollars and 2 YEARS. The next thing is that $6b is a cheap-ass aircraft carrier these days as the one we just built is $13 BILLION DOLLARS. The final thing is why the fuck are we building aircraft carriers? You live in a country where four billion dollar satellites are put into the sky so that government hit squads can execute illegal assassinations and it doesn't even make the news. You live in a country where we're gobsmacked by the notion of providing healthcare for everyone, but bow to the inevitable purchase of $1.5 trillion dollars worth of fighters that nobody wants. We've got a socialist running for president. I say let the fucker kill a few sacred cows.
After the failure of the Boeing led Future Imagery Architecture program in 2005, NRO ordered two additional legacy hardware KH-11s. Critics of the decision voiced concerns that each "exquisite-class" satellite would cost more than the latest Nimitz class aircraft carrier (CVN-77)[2] with its projected procurement cost of US$ 6.35 billion as of May 2005.[3] USA-224 - the first of these two - was completed by Lockheed US $ 2 billion under the initial budget estimate, and two years ahead of schedule.
True dat. Because I felt like it, I can now tell you that the Maginot Line cost $44 billion in 2016 dollars. So - one country-wide series of fortifications and trenches or three modern aircraft carriers. or 22 stealth bombers. I wonder what that is in Albanian mushrooms.
And of the top five countries on those lists, we are first, then two of our allies, then China, then another ally. Of the top 15, all but two are NATO or SEATO countries. $13 Billion for a super aircraft carrier that has no real defense against ballistic missile attack, and the only two global enemies we have, China and Russia, have well developed missile techs.