TIME Lists Some of the Ways the Operation Epic Fury Money Could Have Been Spent

Remember back when New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay told then-MSNBC's Brian Williams that with the $500 million Michael Bloomberg had spent on ads for his 2020 presidential campaign, he could have given every American $1 million?

People always love to play, "With what we spent on ____, we could have given everyone universal healthcare or ended homelessness or fed everyone."

This guy, whose X bio reads, "I like trains," complained that public media could have been funded for 20 years.

This war in 7 days has cost 20 years of NPR/PBS funding. https://t.co/QwZx3jDVjc
— Hayden (@the_transit_guy) March 12, 2026

Or, it could have built zero miles of track for California's high-speed rail project, seeing how he likes trains.

TIME decided to publish a piece on what the $12 billion spent on Operation Epic Fury could have been used for instead.

Here are some of the ways the $12 billion already spent on the Iran war could have been used: https://t.co/cwO6WIbz5w
— TIME (@TIME) March 17, 2026

Nik Popli reports for TIME:

The scale of the spending has fueled criticism from Democrats and some fiscal hawks, who argue that the war’s early price tag already rivals the annual budgets of major domestic programs. “While there is no money for 15 million Americans who lost their health care, there's a billion dollars a day to spend on bombing Iran,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told reporters after a classified briefing last week.

Health care for 1.3 million Americans for a year
Full year of food assistance for 5.5 million Americans
Housing assistance for around 1 million Americans
The entire National Park Service
Child care or universal pre-K for 900,000 children
Pell grants for 1.6 million students
More than 100,000 teachers and nurses
Foreign and humanitarian aid

Or we could have sent it to Somalis in Minnesota
— Lewis Amselem (@TheDiplomad) March 17, 2026

Now do one on what the Minnesota and California fraud dollars could have been used for!
— ThirdOrderThinker (@3rdOrderThinker) March 17, 2026

Now do the billions we spent on expensive hotels for illegals. It’s equivalent to putting them up in expensive European hotels.
— Butterdog (@Butters09016449) March 17, 2026

A chain of Learing Centers in Minnesota?
— D Mike (@FloatsMike) March 17, 2026

Buying your magazine and firing all of you?
— Carl James Grindley (@CJGrindley) March 17, 2026

Newsweek sold for a dollar.

What were some of the ways the $800 billion to $1 trillion Obama spent during his administration could have been used?
— Pres408189 (@pres408189) March 17, 2026

Someone should remind Warren and Popli that President Obama solved healthcare affordability with Obamacare.

Now do the $150 billion we spend on illegals

Now do the hundreds of billions in fraud

Propaganda rag is all you are
— Rondure Gyre 🇺🇸 (@RondureGyre) March 17, 2026

Hey Time - you have exactly one post on Fraud in Minnesota, and its focused on Trump's "attack" in Somalis, rather than dealing with ALL the billions of fraud there - Somali or not. You have no articles on the nearly $200 Billion spent on Ukraine.

No one cares what you think.
— David Blinn (@DLBlinn61) March 17, 2026

Stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon = $12 billion

Watching Leftist bend over backwards to defend a tyrannical regime that murders it's own citizens = Priceless

Keep it up folks, you're doing great
— Redneck Rogue Elf, 🐿 Whisperer (@TheRogue_Elf) March 17, 2026

$12 billion is an accounting error compared to what we spend on illegals. It's funny how TIME's agenda directly reflects the Democrat agenda.

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