Costs of War study – Engaging Peace

[A continuing series by guest author Neta Crawford about why it so difficult to accurately assess the true costs of war.]

The third reason the official numbers are low is the tendency to focus on what has already been spent, forgetting future war-related obligations. But of course, paying for the wars will not end when the last soldiers come home.

Disabled veterans poster — Image in public domain

The two most expensive future costs for the federal budget are future interest on war spending, and the costs of veterans care (medical and disability payments). Economist Ryan Edwards estimates that interest payments on appropriations through this year for both wars will be about $1 trillion to 2020. It would be nice if the war related debt was paid by then.

But more expensive and difficult to predict are the costs of caring for the more than 2.2 million veterans of these wars over the next 40 years. Linda Bilmes estimates that the VA will spend between $600 billion but likely closer to $900 billion for the more than 1 million discharged through last year. When all are home, the estimates and the costs will rise.

Why will the costs of veterans’ care be so high? First, these veterans will need to draw more medical and disability care than veterans of previous wars because they face more and in many cases more complex injuries than the past. This is in part due to advances in trauma medicine.

In World War II, the ratio of injured to dead was 3 to 1; in Iraq the ratio is about 8 to 1. More than 600,000 veterans have already been treated at the VA and more than 600,000 have claimed disability.

As these veterans — dealing with an average of more than 5 medical conditions — age, their injures will often become more complex and expensive to treat.

If we add the past spending and estimates for future federal expenditures, the total for Iraq alone is between $2.7-3.3 trillion. If we add the costs of Afghanistan, the total rises far higher.

Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we continue the series by guest author Neta Crawford. Part 2 picks up on the question of why it so difficult to accurately assess the true costs of war.]

First, there is a tendency to focus on what has been appropriated by Congress specifically for the war, with the consequence that the larger costs of war in Iraq are either missed or downplayed.

Dollars and dollars and dollars — "Artwork" with 20 Dollar Bills by selbstfotografiert, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Unported 3.0 license

Specifically, many tallies focus on Congressional appropriations to the Department of Defense for the Iraq war, most of which were authorized in special emergency or supplemental appropriation, not included in the regular Pentagon “base” budget appropriations.

Others rightly include war related appropriations to the Veterans Administration and the State Department and US Agency for International Development (AID). One of the most sophisticated of these analyses, by Amy Belasco of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) totals appropriations to Pentagon, State/USAID and the VA at $806 billion from 2003-2011.

But overall Pentagon appropriations and spending increased over the war in large part due to the Congressional desire to give the military whatever they needed and more.

Winslow Wheeler, of the Center for Defense Information, estimates that the base budget increase attributable to both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is more than $600 billion over the last 10 years (whether one counts in current or constant dollars, and that matters).

If Wheeler is right or even right by half, then the share of the increase in base appropriations to the Pentagon that can reasonably attributed to the Iraq war is between $190 billion and $380 billion.

The second reason the official estimates are low compared to what the war will actually cost is the tendency to forget how the Iraq war was financed — almost entirely by deficit spending. If one calculates the interest on debt for just the Pentagon, State, and VA appropriations, using the amount appropriated according the CRS, for the Iraq war already paid, the total is about $117 billion.

Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org

Until the last soldiers come home (Cost of war, Part 3)

“Give the military whatever they need and more” (Cost of war, Part 2)