We Had Money In The Federal Budget For ... What?

By Isaiah J. Poole

May 18, 2012 - 3:36pm ET 

From the House Republicans whose leader, Speaker John Boehner, just three days ago claimed that "we can’t go on spending money we don’t have," and "our economy is stuck in large part because it’s stuck with debt," comes this:

The House on Friday approved a sweeping defense authorization bill for 2013 that calls for the construction of an East Coast missile defense system in the United States by the end of 2015.

The bill obligates $100 million next year to plan for the site, but the project would cost billions of dollars in later years that has yet to be funded.

That's right — the Star Wars missile shield is back, except that this time the threat is not from intercontinental nuclear missiles from Russia, but intercontinental nuclear missiles from Iran.