The Congressional Budget Office’s newly released budget outlook notes that Congress has approved over $1 trillion in direct spending on wars and war-related activities since 2001, and that price tag is only getting higher as the wars drag on.
The spending was divided between $708 billion for the Iraq War, $345 billion for the Afghan War, and $22 billion for assorted other war activities in other countries. The Obama Administration’s repeated projections of a lower budget output for wars in coming years aside, they show no sign of slowing.
The estimated price tag only includes direct costs incurred as a result of the US occupations of those nations, and does not include the trillions of other dollars spent on the military since 2001.
Nor does it include the overall cost of the war to the American economy, a figure economists put at several trillion dollars years ago, and which has only risen as the US presence overseas continues to grow.
The US currently has over 100,000 troops in Iraq, and the escalation in Afghanistan will soon have America’s commitment there near 100,000 as well. The Obama Administration has projected cuts to the Iraq force since taking office, but recent bombings have raised serious doubts about America’s ability to withdraw from the nation, years after both parties agreed that the war was successfully “won.” Troop numbers in Afghanistan will likely continue to rise for the forseeable future.
Please type in 'what does one trillion dollars look like' to get some sense of all this madness.
War escalation were not included in the Freeze. medicare even was cut back to loosen up more funds for the War. when are you People going to pull another Vietnam and tell your Generals : enough is enough ?
When they bring back the draft.
As Nikita Kruschev observed and said: "We don't have to worry about the United States. They will spend themselves out of existence." WOW – how did he know that way back in the 1950s?
The U.S.S.R. already sent itself out of existence by the late 80s on militarism and we are going down the same path, sad. 🙁
Trillions of dollars for unjust, immoral and aggressive war; hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the military-industrial complex; and hundreds of billions of dollars to bailout the Wall Street banksters, but not one damned penney for millions of poor Americans who can't afford health insurance. Now tell me, is there one damned bit of diffrence between the Demoncrats and the Repugnantcans? No, there is no diffrence. They are both owned lock, stock and barrel by the corporations. The federal government has become a fascist (corporate) enterprise.
And another thing, the money made her in the U.S. is lost when you figure what the private contractors have stolen.
Bring home all US military… relocate them… and use the $1,000,000,000,000
H E R E!!!!!!!!!
"$22 billion for assorted other war activities in other countries…" WTF???
The stupids in the fascist government DO NOT get it- bazillions spent daily to terrorize, torture and occupy 3 nations ! And they think somehow their country can recover ?!
tioche; Mexico
The costs of veterans health care and pensions for the Viet Nam War has not yet peaked. I expect for every dollar of incremental costs there will be another two or three for health care, pensions, GI Bill benefits and equipment replacements. The War on Terror has already put the US on the hook for $ 4 trillion and Afghanistan will add another trillion before it's wound up.
Luckily, Obama announced in his State of the Union that the ‘freeze’ will not apply to our military Empire’s budget.
Each billion dollars collected in federal taxes results in about 80 deaths over the couple years following collection due to increased risks from the involuntary removal of property. One family might delay getting new brakes. Another might delay throwing out food. It goes on and the risks add up. They add up to 80 deaths per $B. This is in addition to other harm such as bad grades or broken legs.
(Each billion printed or borrowed by the feds will result in more deaths over a longer period, but to keep this simple, we can assume the wars were paid for by taxes.)
That means the wars since 2001 have a funding cost that includes 80,000 deaths of Americans. (The costs to Americans are much higher than that; this is just the funding.)
That is a lot.