| Your family's share of the Iraq invasion/occupation could amount to $46,400 if the war goes on another 5 years. (That's as of Nov 2007) |
| The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion
The $1.6 trillion figure, for the period from 2002 to 2008, translates into a cost of $20,900 for a family of four, the report said. For the Iraq war only, total economic costs were estimated at $1.3 trillion for the period from 2002 to 2008. That would cost a family of four $16,500, the report said. Future economic costs would be even greater. The report estimated that both wars would cost $3.5 trillion between 2003 and 2017. Under that scenario, it would cost a family of four $46,400, the report said. Meanwhile, ''the sum of interest paid on Iraq-related debt from 2003 to 2017 will total over $550 billion,'' the report said. The government has to make interest payments on the money it borrows to finance the national debt, which recently hit $9 trillion for the first time. [H]igh oil prices have hit U.S. consumers in the pocket, transferring ''approximately $124 billion from U.S. oil consumers to foreign (oil) producers'' from 2003 to 2008... according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee. Source: "Iraq, Afghan War Costs Are $1.6 Trillion" By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS via NY Times - November 13, 2007 The Democratic-led Congress recently [raised the debt limit], raising the ceiling to $9.82 trillion as the former $8.97 trillion maximum was about to be exceeded. It was the fifth debt-ceiling increase since Bush became president in 2001. Aggravating the debt picture: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade Who is loaning Washington all this money? Ordinary investors who buy Treasury bills, notes and U.S. savings bonds, for one. Also it is banks, pension funds, mutual fund companies and state, local and increasingly foreign governments. This accounts for about $5.1 trillion of the total and is called the ''publicly held'' debt. The remaining $4 trillion is owed to Social Security and other government accounts, according to the Treasury Department, which keeps figures on the national debt down to the penny on its Web site. Foreign governments and investors now hold some $2.23 trillion -- or about 44 percent -- of all publicly held U.S. debt. That's up 9.5 percent from a year earlier. Japan is first with $586 billion, followed by China ($400 billion) and Britain ($244 billion). Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries account for $123 billion, according to the Treasury. ''The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, `we've bought enough of your paper,' then the debt -- whatever level it is at that point -- becomes unmanageable,'' said [Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis Communications, a business consulting firm.] ''We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years,'' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. ''That's fiscal irresponsibility.'' Source: "National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute" - By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - December 3, 2007 The cost goes well beyond the more than $250 billion already spent on military operations and reconstruction. Basic running costs of the current conflicts are $6 billion a month - a figure that reflects the Pentagon's unprecedented reliance on expensive private contractors. Other factors keeping costs high include inducements for recruits and for military personnel serving second and third deployments, extra pay for reservists and members of the National Guard, as well as more than $2 billion a year in additional foreign aid to Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and others to reward their cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill for repairing and replacing military hardware is $20 billion a year, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office. But the biggest long-term costs are disability and health payments for returning troops, which will be incurred even if hostilities were to stop tomorrow. The United States currently pays more than $2 billion in disability claims per year for 159,000 veterans of the 1991 gulf war, even though that conflict lasted only five weeks, with 148 dead and 467 wounded. Even assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for the next 45 years. All of this spending will need to be financed by adding to the federal debt. Extra interest payments will total $200 billion or more even if the borrowing is repaid quickly. Conflict in the Middle East has also played a part in doubling the price of oil from $30 a barrel just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to $60 a barrel today. Each $5 increase in the price of oil reduces our national income by about $17 billion a year. Even by this simple yardstick, if the American military presence in the region lasts another five years, the total outlay for the war could stretch to more than $1.3 trillion, or $11,300 for every household in the United States. Source: "The Trillion-Dollar War" By LINDA BILMES - NY Times - 8/20/05 Doug Henwood, author of "After the New Economy"... pegs the military costs in Iraq to date [June 2004] at about $143 billion, with the tab rising $4 billion to $5 billion a month. Reconstruction has cost about $20 billion so far, with another $50 billion to $100 billion still needed, Henwood reports. "If the occupation goes on for three years, which is what the military pundits say is likely, the total bill could come to $362 billion. Add to that an estimated 0.5 percent knocked off GDP growth because of high oil prices, and that's another $50 billion," he says. Add it all up, and the bill comes to nearly $4,000 per household, not including interest. "I wonder how people would react if they got a bill from Washington for that amount," he said. Source: Cape Cod Times "Your bill for the war -- How's $4,000 per household sound? Halliburton thanks you." by Sean Gonsalves - 5/24/04 Even by Washington standards, the $119.4 billion that President Bush and Congress have provided for the first two years of the war in Iraq is real money. The total would…be enough to hand every Iraqi a check for $4,776 -- about eight times that country's average income. [This is enough to] buy a median U.S. home -- median price $174,100, according to the National Association of Realtors -- for 685,813 people, slightly more than all the residents of Austin [,Texas]. Source: "So far, Iraq war has cost $119.4 billion" by Alan Fram - Dallas Morning News - 6/6/04 |
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