Costs of War: The Fuzzy Math Continues

President Barack Obama’s budget outline, released last week, says the costs of the war in the current fiscal year (which ends in October) will be US$144 billion. More than half, $75.5 billion, will be in a so-called emergency supplemental appropriation that will be submitted to Congress later this year.

Such spending bills are intended to provide additional funds for unforeseen government expenses. The Bush administration used them to pay for the war on terror because it meant that the spending was not governed by the fiscally conservative (and GOP-authored) congressional budgeting rules known as "Pay-As-You-Go." Such spending, because it was requested later in the budget cycle, also rarely received the level of congressional scrutiny or press attention that regular military budget requests get.

Democrats promised, when they took control of Congress two years ago; and then again when they moved into the White House earlier this year, that they would do away with the use of emergency supplementals to meet the pretty easily foreseeable costs of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Still, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters last week that a number of expenditure items which in previous years had been put into supplementals "under the new rules, have been […] shifted" into the regular budget request this time around.

"One would be the cost of building the end strength in the Army and Marine Corps," he said, referring to the overall size of the US military’s ground combat forces, which Obama has promised to expand. "Another would be new programs for taking care of the wounded and their families," and a third was the multi-billion dollar funding for the US military’s efforts to defeat roadside bombs or IEDs.

Although Gates didn’t give a figure, the total costs of all those expenditures is thought to be about US$8 billion - US$9 billion.
But the US$75.5 billion supplemental which remains outside the regular budget process is in addition to the Pentagon’s general spending, the so-called baseline budget, which was US$513.3 billion in 2009.

Next year, Fiscal Year 2010, which starts in October 2009, Obama’s budget outline says the cost of the two wars will be US$130 billion, on top of a baseline budget of US$533.7 billion - the highest ever requested. Beyond that, the outline includes only what its authors acknowledge are "placeholder estimates" - of US$50 billion a year from 2011. Despite the tentative way in which these estimates for spending in what budgeteers call the "out years" were advanced, critics immediately slammed them.

"This budget is a lesson in fuzzy math," House Republican Leader Rep John Boehner said in a statement Monday. He claimed that the administration was claiming "phantom savings for money they never intended to spend in the first place."

But even the US$130 billion for next year includes some estimates which are questionable at best, if not outright dubious.

To begin with, said Gates, the part of that estimate which covers Afghanistan, "basically includes only the forces that the president has approved be sent at this stage." In other words, it makes no allowance for any additional troops the president decides to send - and most agree it is likely he will - following the major review of Afghan policy which will be completed next month.

Moreover, the estimate also assumes the US is able to stick to the timetable Obama laid down for about 100,000 US combat troops to withdraw from Iraq next year, leaving just a "residual force" of 35,000 - 50,000, which in turn will leave completely by the end of 2011, as currently envisaged in the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.

Last year, researchers from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Services (CRS) estimated that in 2006, the most recent year for which figures were available, the cost of sustaining each US force-member overseas was US$390,000. That means that the costs of any delay in bringing substantial numbers of troops home will grow at enormous speed.

That fact can be seen if figures from another set of nonpartisan researchers, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). They reported in January that the estimated cost of the war on terror over 2010-2019 would vary wildly depending on what assumptions are made about how far and how quickly troop levels overseas were reduced.

If US forces were drawn down swiftly, to about 30,000 by 2011 - about a half of the level currently planned for that time - and stay constant at that level, the costs by 2019 would amount to US$388 billion, or less than US$40 billion a year on average. But if 75,000 remain deployed by 2013 and stay so for the rest of the decade - still less than half the number currently in both theaters - the costs would more than double, to US$867 billion over the whole ten years.

But the real fuzzy math is in the amount the Pentagon is budgeting for its big ticket items - aircraft, ships and submarines, and advanced infantry combat systems.

As critics like Winslow Wheeler - a veteran overseer of US military spending who worked for both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill - have pointed out, the largest defense budget in history has given the US its smallest armed forces in 50 years and equipped them with the most aged weapons systems.

"In inflation adjusted dollars, the Pentagon budget is higher today than at its peaks for either Korea or Vietnam - though both of those were far larger than our current wars," said Wheeler.

While the Army budget is at its highest since 1946, the number of Army divisions or their equivalents has fallen from a high point of 28 in 1953 to just 11 last year. Similarly, the US Navy’s budget has grown in fits and starts since WWII, and though it is currently lower (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than its high point during the Reagan administration, the number of active duty combat ships it can deploy has fallen from more than 1,000 in 1946 to about a third of that today.

Nor can this "getting less for more" be explained by the acquisition of futuristic, but expensive, weapons systems. "The average age of our aircraft, ships, and tanks has been increasing relentlessly since the 50s," said Wheeler.