Bush’S War Funding Masks True Costs, Says Think Tank

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $2.3 trillion through 2018, states a Pentagon-funded think tank. Bush’s War Funding Masks True Costs, Says Think TankBy Cliff Montgomery – Dec. 17th, 2008The Bush Administration’s “ad hoc” strategy for financing the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts has effectively kept citizens and lawmakers from knowing the total cost of these actions, concludes a new study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). The CSBA is a Defense Department-funded think tank which focuses on U.S. war and budget policy.The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may actually cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $2.3 trillion through 2018, the author of the report recently has stated.U.S. administrations normally cover principal war costs through the yearly appropriations process–which inherently allows a decent level of public and Congressional oversight into the actions and final cost of a conflict.Supplemental appropriations previously were only employed to cover the initial, unanticipated portions of a major military engagement. But George W. Bush has almost entirely relied upon supplemental appropriations to fund the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.This near-total reliance on supplemental funds inherently creates a false picture of war costs, said CSBA Budget Studies Vice President Steven Kosiak during a Monday briefing. Kosiak also was the author of the new study.”A sound budgeting process forces policymakers [and citizens] to recognize the true costs of their policy choices,” said Kosiak.”The failure to include estimates of the costs of these military operations in the administration’s annual [spending] projections…means that those projections substantially understate likely future funding requirements,” states the report.”In turn, this may lead the administration and Congress to enact spending increases in other areas or tax cuts that it would not consider if, more realistically, its projections of federal spending requirements included an estimate of war costs,” continues the study.And of course, a continual reliance on supplementals virtually destroys any serious oversight of an administration’s war activities and funding.Defense funding requests normally are submitted as part of the annual fiscal appropriations process. Any war requests first are considered by the House and Senate Armed Services and Budget committees for initial authorization, before they finally are sent to the Appropriations committees.By contrast, supplemental spending requests are sent straight to the Appropriations panels–thereby eliminating much public and Congressional oversight in one stroke. And since these are calls for immediate war funding, the few lawmakers who still hold some sway over war costs have little time to ask serious questions.The Democratic-run Congress finally forced the Bush White House to include its war funding requests in the administration’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 budget plan. But Bush soon went back to his old tricks: The administration refused to include complete war-funding costs in its Defense budget request for FY 2009.Such a move forces the incoming Obama Administration to hand Congressional Appropriation committees its own supplemental war funding request in early 2009.The supplementals also make it much harder to separate war costs from other Pentagon expenditures, stated the study. This has allowed the Defense Department to apply an expansive, and often utterly false, definition of ‘war costs’.An especially egregious example occurred in 2007, when Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England released a memo informing the armed services that they may include various costs related to Bush’s “Global War on Terrorism” in their supplemental requests for the Iraq and Afghanistan military engagements.Kosiak said that was similar to telling the 1970s U.S. armed services that they might include various Cold War program costs in their Vietnam War funding estimates.America normally pays for its wars through an assortment of higher taxes, budget cuts and light borrowing. The 1991 Gulf War was the exception–it was almost entirely funded by U.S. ally contributions.But that all changed with George W. Bush.”Not only did we not raise taxes, we cut taxes and significantly expanded spending,” Kosiak said, noting Bush’s drug coverage extentions to Medicare recipients as a singular example. Hence many observers now believe that the military engagements within Afghanistan and Iraq have been completely financed through borrowing, said Kosiak.The CSBA states that so far the wars have cost U.S. taxpayers $904 billion, in 2008 dollars. Those costs may grow to around $1.7 trillion by 2018, if troop deployment remains fairly high.But if one presumes that these wars are funded with borrowed money, then interest and similar charges will add an additional $600 billion of costs through 2018, making a total of about $2.3 trillion, added Kosiak.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? 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