What are the implications of the current war for U.S. budget and military spending?

Though no firm figures are available on what the war is costing us, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates those costs at between $500 million and $1 billion a month. This includes the costs of cruise missiles (between $1 million and $2 million a piece), laser-guided "bunker-busting" bombs ($125,000 a copy) and the relatively cheap--except as measured in human carnage--unguided cluster bombs ($5,000 per). It also includes about $5,000 in fuel per hour for the long round trips of the F/A 18 fighter-bombers, and about $25 million to deploy 1,000 ground troops in Uzbekistan. It does not include the costs of deploying National Guard and reserve troops to guard U.S. airports and the air patrols over several cities.

Of more long-term significance is the Bush administration's (and the defense industry's) use of the war as a platform for supporting massive, sustained increases in overall military spending. The Senate has recently approved a defense budget for FY 2002 of $343 billion dollars, in addition to the $20 billion in emergency funds. The 9-11 windfall will provide accelerated support for the Pentagon's full menu of systems, including three overlapping fighter jet programs that have been proceeding in tandem despite all the talk of military transformation.

One exception to the rule of military budget expansion was the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helps Russia dismantle its nuclear weapons, secure its remaining arsenal, and divert its nuclear scientists, via productive employment, from selling their skills to, for example, terrorist networks. These programs took an $86 million hit.

This is curious, given President Bush's commitment at his summit with President Putin to curbing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, Senate Democrats gave him a second chance to fund this "top priority" of his, in their package of $15 billion worth of proposed budget additions for homeland security. Also among their proposals was $215 million for increased security at U.S. nuclear power plants and weapons facilities. He turned them down, saying we should wait until next year to figure all this out.

Why? Because, one suspects, next year he will be able to pit these priorities against the domestic budget items--health care, education, infrastructure, the environment, etc.--that were already endangered by his (first) tax cut.

This page was last modified on Monday, December 10, 2001 4:19 PM
Contact the IRC's webmaster with inquiries regarding the functionality of this website.
Copyright © 2001 IRC and IPS. All rights reserved.