McGovern highlights costs of Afghan war

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff

Representative James McGovern, a Worcester Democrat, joined a bipartisan effort to link the escalating budget deficit with the on-going costs of the Afghan war.

"This week we are debating a budget that purports to represent new fiscal restraint, yet continues to borrow tens of billions of dollars for the war in Afghanistan," McGovern said Thursday at an event on Capitol Hill organized by Brave New Foundation, a California-based social justice organization. "I'm tired of being told that we don't have enough money for education or infrastructure or medical research, but we can afford to spend billions of dollars propping up a corrupt regime in Kabul."

McGovern has been working with Representative Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, to introduce legislation as early as May that would require exit strategy from Afghanistan.

"President Obama has said that we will begin to withdraw our troops in July of this year. We must hold him to that promise," McGovern said. "Rather than nation-building in Afghanistan, we need to do some more nation-building right here at home."

The event was part of a Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan campaign, which seeks to highlight the costs of the war by building a web site that calculates how much an American citizen has contributed to the war's cost.

Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.