War costs, while high, are a small part of budget deficits
source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/80148.html
-
-
- Future_America
- added this
President Barack Obama insisted last week that as the nation confronts record government debt and pressing economic needs at home, it cannot afford a lengthy, ambitious nation-building effort in Afghanistan — but limiting U. S. involvement is unlikely to make much of a dent in the record federal debt.
Liberals complain that the war has been a big contributor to the nation's budget problems, and are insisting that some way be found to pay for the buildup.
But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they've virtually all been funded by deficit spending, are not the main reason why the publicly held national debt has more than doubled — from $3.339 trillion to $7.709 trillion — since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
That's not to say the war costs don't matter.
Obama last week said that he'd deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This year's expected $30 billion to $40 billion price tag for that should boost the total cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion over the last nine years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That spending accounts for only about one-fifth of publicly held debt accumulated in that time.
National defense spending accounted for 20.7 percent of the federal budget last year. While that's higher than peacetime lows of around 16 percent in the late 1990s, it's less than the 26-28 percent annual shares between 1975, when U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, and 1992, when first the Cold War and then the 1991 Gulf War ended.
What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990.
The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes.
More @ link
Liberals complain that the war has been a big contributor to the nation's budget problems, and are insisting that some way be found to pay for the buildup.
But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they've virtually all been funded by deficit spending, are not the main reason why the publicly held national debt has more than doubled — from $3.339 trillion to $7.709 trillion — since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
That's not to say the war costs don't matter.
Obama last week said that he'd deploy an additional 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This year's expected $30 billion to $40 billion price tag for that should boost the total cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $1 trillion over the last nine years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That spending accounts for only about one-fifth of publicly held debt accumulated in that time.
National defense spending accounted for 20.7 percent of the federal budget last year. While that's higher than peacetime lows of around 16 percent in the late 1990s, it's less than the 26-28 percent annual shares between 1975, when U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, and 1992, when first the Cold War and then the 1991 Gulf War ended.
What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990.
The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes.
More @ link
-
- tags:
- News, News and Politics, War, Money, 2 more
-
-
Republicrat86 [removed]
-
Not to mention the military employs millions of people. Not every dollar goes to blowing up afghan children as hard as that may seem to allot of people on this site.
- 2 years ago
-
Republicrat86 [removed]
