After four years, America's cost for the war in Iraq has reached
nearly US$500 billion more than the total for the Korean War and
nearly as much as 12 years in Vietnam, adjusting for inflation. The
ultimate cost could reach US$1 trillion or more.
A lot of money? No question.
But even though the war has turned out to be much more expensive
than Bush administration officials predicted on the eve of the
March 2003 invasion, it is relatively affordable at least in
historical terms.
Iraq eats up less than 1 percent of the nation's gross domestic
product, compared with as much as 14 percent for Vietnam and 9
percent for Korea.
"I think it's hard to argue it's not affordable," said Steven M.
Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank in Washington, DC.
The problem, he and other budget analysts argue, is not so much
the overall cost of the Iraq War. It's the way the government has
chosen to pay for it.
For one thing, war funding for both Iraq and Afghanistan has
come in the form of supplemental appropriations outside the normal
federal budget process. Typically these "supplementals" are used to
pay for unexpected emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina, and they
receive much less scrutiny from Congress.
President Harry S. Truman quit asking for supplementals after
the first year of the Korean War. The Vietnam War started appearing
in the federal budget beginning in 1966, the year after regular
troops were committed.
But after four years the Iraq War is still being funded with
supplementals. In December, congressional budget leaders from both
parties sent a letter to President George W. Bush asking him to
start paying for Iraq through the traditional budget process. The
administration has done that in its 2008 budget year request but
not before asking for another US$100 billion supplemental to keep
the war going through the end of this year.
?
And during previous wars, presidents have asked Americans to make
tough sacrifices in order to help pay for the war effort, said
Robert Hormats, a managing director at Goldman Sachs and author of
the forthcoming book The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's
Wars.
Virtually every war in US history has required the government to
borrow at least some money, Hormats said. "No such thing has
occurred" during this war, he said.
(China Daily via agencies March 19, 2007)
