That would be the Afghanistan War. Putting aside the death and destruction from this immoral folly, if you want to know where the money for bridges went, or the money we could use to shore up pensions might have gone, or the money we could use for EXPANDING Social Security...it's in the cities, mountains and plains of Afghanistan.
And most of the tab has been picked up by Barack Obama.
The Financial Times, a pretty sober publication, has this:
The Afghanistan war, the longest overseas conflict in American history, has cost the US taxpayer nearly $1tn and will require spending several hundred billion dollars more after it officially ends this month, according to Financial Times calculations and independent researchers.
Around 80 per cent of that spending on the Afghanistan conflict has taken place during the presidency of Barack Obama, who sharply increased the US military presence in the country after taking office in 2009.[emphasis added]
And swallow this:
With the Iraq war having already cost the US $1.7tn, according to one study, the bill from the Afghanistan conflict is an important factor in the broader reluctance among the American public and the Obama administration to intervene militarily in other parts of the world — including sending troops back to Iraq.
John Sopko, the government’s special inspector-general for Afghanistan, whose organisation monitors the more than $100bn that has been spent on reconstruction projects in the country, said that “billions of dollars” of those funds had been wasted or stolen on projects that often made little sense for the conditions in Afghanistan.
“We simply cannot lose this amount of money again,” he said. “The American people will not put up with it.”
Adjusted for inflation, Mr Sopko said the amount the US had spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan was more than the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe.[emphasis added]
The FT also provide this short sidebar calculating what the money could have been used for:
FUND the US government to September 2015
PAY the US total student loan debt of $10.8tn
COMPLETE a third of the $3.6tn needed for repairs to rail, roads and levees
FUND Medicare for two years
EXTEND Bush tax cuts for eight years (total cost $1.35tn)[emphasis added only for those things that are worth doing]
Of course, I'm not for giving a penny to pay for foolish, immoral tax cuts, not to mention extending them.
So, each time you hear the phrase, "Cut Medicare", reply "Afghanistan".
Each time you hear students, rightly, march about the high cost of tuition, reply "Afghanistan".
Each time, we listen to the moronic debate over the budget and "balancing the budget", reply "Afghanistan".
Every time you hit a massive pothole, remember "Afghanistan".
And it ain't over: the cost to care for the veterans who have come home shattered will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the years to come.
As a complete aside, or maybe not so complete: be careful what you want to "purchase" blindly...the blind love for a certain senator today feels exactly like the hero worship, uncritical belief followed in 2007. Some of us are entirely not surprised.