The Real Scale of U.S. Defense Spending
Veronique de Rugy|Dec. 17, 2014
▻http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/17/one-trillion-spent-on-war-in-afghanistan
Remember back in 2002 when President Bush allegedly canned his chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, for saying that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost more than $100 billion? Well, it turns out Bush was right to fire him because his estimates were way off! So far the cost of the wars to U.S. taxpayers is nearly $3 trillion—a figure that could double in the future as the associated legacy costs (e.g., veteran healthcare benefits) mount.
And it can’t all be blamed on President #Bush, because President #Obama hasn’t been the tightwad #peacenik that the military interventionists claim. According to a story in yesterday’s Financial Times, the war in Afghanistan has cost $1 trillion thus far and roughly 80 percent of that total was spent under the administration our Nobel Peace Prize winning president. (...)
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Speaking of unforeseen defense costs, it is worth noting that the actual taxpayer cost of maintaining America’s global military presence and interventionist foreign policies is much higher than the Department of Defense’s budget. The chart below shows the real scale of the government’s spending on defense-related activities. The total for fiscal year 2013 is roughly $861 billion (not including interest which amounts to roughly $58 billion).