US war costs continue to shoot
up By David Isenberg
The US military budget has been steadily
growing since 2001, sometimes by leaps and bounds.
Yet Pentagon officials and most members of
Congress say it needs yet more. Why is that?
It is true government figures always
understate costs. The Pentagon budget is no
exception. Congress in December passed a US$453
billion defense appropriations bill for fiscal
year 2006. In fact, the total amount to be spent
for the Department of Defense in 2006 is $13
billion to $63 billion more, the latter figure
assuming full funding for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. If you also count non-DoD "national
defense" costs, add another $21 billion, and if
you count defense-related security costs, such as
homeland security, the release numbers are low by
more than $200 billion.
The 2007 budget
request of $439 billion marks an increase of about
27% in real terms since September 11, 2001,
according to
one
analysis. This figure does not include $21.8
billion for Energy Department spending on
nuclear-weapons activities. Nor does it include
spending on the wars the United States is actually
fighting. When these costs are added in, military
spending for the coming year will be more than
$600 billion - a figure that would exceed both the
heights of the late president Ronald Reagan's
military buildup and the Vietnam War, in
inflation-adjusted terms.
Of course,
Congress pretends to be more of a budget hawk than
it is by means of accounting sleight of hand. For
example, according to a tutorial by Winslow
Wheeler, former congressional military-budget
analyst and now director of the Straus Military
Reform Project at the liberal Washington, DC-based
Center for Defense Information:
In the last few years, the annual
defense appropriation bill has been supplemented
by an additional Title IX, often called
"additional appropriations". This year, it
amounted to $50 billion, none of it requested by
the president. Its declared purpose is to pay
for ongoing military operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
This money has a unique
characteristic. It is "emergency" spending,
which has had a specific legislative meaning
since a 1991 budget agreement between Congress
and then-president George H W Bush. "Emergency"
spending is appropriations that do not count in
the "spending caps" Congress imposes on itself
for appropriations. For example, the 2006
congressional budget resolution imposed a "cap"
on the DoD appropriation bill at $402.3 billion.
The $452.8 billion Congress appropriated for
that bill was, of course, way over that limit.
However, $50 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in
Title IX and $5.9 billion in Hurricane Katrina
and avian-flu expenses in other parts of the
bill were all exempted from being "scored" to
the cost of the bill because they are designated
as "emergency". Thus the $452.8 billion bill
fits under the $402.3 billion "cap" with room to
spare.
More to the point, the
"emergency" [budget restraint exempt]
characteristic of such Title IXs provide
Congress, and its budget gamers, an incentive.
If Congress can find a pretext to move programs
from the regular part of the bill, where the
spending counts, to Title IX, where the money
does not count, then Congress can advertise
itself as saving money. That is precisely what
is going on.
In addition, the White
House has chosen to fund the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq through supplemental appropriations and
not through the regular budget.
When America invaded Iraq in March
2003, Congress had not yet appropriated a single
penny of the costs of that military operation.
Instead, Congress waited for President George
Bush to submit a request for "supplemental"
appropriations. That first request for fiscal
year 2003 was insufficient, and another
supplemental request was later submitted. That's
the pattern. For virtually each year of the war,
Bush has submitted at least one, but usually
two, supplemental funding requests. For the
ongoing fiscal year, 2006, Bush never submitted
a first supplemental; instead, in December 2005,
Congress tacked on to the 2006 DoD
Appropriations Act a $50 billion "bridge fund"
to pay for the first part of this year's
war.
Predictably, just like regular
appropriations bills, the supplementals serve as
vehicles for dubious spending. Veronique de Rugy,
a research fellow at the conservative American
Enterprise Institute, said supplemental bills
amounted to "budget tricks" to evade spending
limits.
"We have been using supplementals
to finance the war, and it might actually make
sense the first year," she said. "But three or
four years into the war, no war spending should be
going through supplementals. It's not as if it's
sudden, urgent and unforeseen, or temporary."
Interestingly, on June 28 the Pentagon
delivered to Congress a report, "Fiscal Year 2007
President's Budget: Department of Defense Budget
Allowance Details", that spells out how the
Pentagon wants to spend the $50 billion it is
seeking to pay for operations in the "war on
terrorism" during the first few months of fiscal
2007. The Pentagon refuses to release the report
publicly.
The Pentagon's budget is being
pressured by a corresponding flood of red ink in
the federal budget, augmented by rising costs of
Medicare, hurricane relief on the Gulf of Mexico
coast, tax cuts and the Iraq war.
Budget-wise, the war in Iraq has been one
of increasing costs. In January, the Pentagon said
it spent $4.5 billion a month on recurring
operational costs in Iraq in fiscal 2005, nearly
$300 million more than the average monthly costs
the previous year. But that cost was only a piece
of defense spending for the ongoing operations,
and does not include more than $1 billion spent
each month on procurement and military
construction projects, as well as additional funds
allocated for intelligence operations in Iraq.
Iraq war costs are averaging about $6
billion a month, with Afghanistan costing another
$1 billion. Together, that's more than the annual
budget of the entire Coast Guard and 15 times what
the Homeland Security Department is budgeted to
spend this fiscal year on emergency preparedness
for floods and other natural disasters.
In
March, the Congressional Research Service released
a report that said spending will rise to $9.8
billion a month from the $6.8 billion a month the
Pentagon said it spent last year. The group's
March 10 report cites "substantial" expenses to
replace or repair damaged weapons, aircraft,
vehicles, radios and spare parts. US military
spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will average 44%
more in the current fiscal year than in 2005.
The research service said it considers
"all war and occupation costs", and figures in
costs for health care, fuel, national intelligence
and the training of Iraqi and Afghan security
forces - "now a substantial expense", while the
Pentagon counts just the cost of personnel,
maintenance and operations.
War costs are
rising despite Pentagon estimates of lower
personnel costs. Offsetting that decline is an
increased request for procurement of new
equipment: $25.7 billion in 2006, up from the
$18.8 billion Congress provided in 2005. And
year-by-year comparisons show that appropriations
for operations and maintenance spending for the US
Army and Marine Corps are rising by better than
30%. Higher fuel prices are a factor. In addition,
the army must hire more contractors for logistical
chores previously handled by National Guard
forces, who have returned home after their
mobilization has run its course.
In fact,
annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the
$61 billion a year that the United States spent in
Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars.
And the outlook is for more of the same.
In July, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
released an analysis that found:
The Congress has appropriated $432
billion for military operations and other
activities related to the war on terrorism since
September 2001. According to CBO estimates, from
the time US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003,
$290 billion has been allocated for activities
in Iraq, of which $254 billion has gone to the
Department of Defense and other defense agencies
for military operations. Approximately $14
billion has been provided to establish, train
and equip Iraqi security forces. Another $22
billion has been appropriated for reconstruction
and relief efforts, diplomatic and consular
operations, embassy construction, economic
support and foreign aid.
In addition
to the amounts specifically appropriated for the
"war on terrorism", the CBO estimates that from
2003 to the end of fiscal year 2006, the Veterans
Administration will have spent about $1 billion on
medical care, disability compensation, and
survivor benefits resulting from military
activities in Iraq.
The CBO also projected
the cost of those activities over the next 10
years under two scenarios.
In the first scenario the number of
forces deployed in and around Iraq would be
reduced from the current level of approximately
190,000 to 140,000 in 2007 and would continue to
decline rapidly until all troops were withdrawn
from the Iraq theater of operations by the end
of calendar year 2009. By CBO's estimates, that
scenario would require additional appropriations
totaling $166 billion for military operations
over the 2007-2016 period.
In the second
scenario, the number of troops deployed to the
Iraq theater of operations would decline less
rapidly, from 170,000 in 2007 to 40,000 by the
end of calendar year 2010 and would remain at
that lower level through 2016. By CBO's
estimates, that scenario would require the
appropriation of $368 billion for military
operations over the 2007-2016
period.
Lack of accountability over
Iraq war-related spending has been so obvious and
blatant that Republican members of Congress agreed
to co-sponsor with Democrats a landmark proposal
to create a special House committee to investigate
Iraq war spending. Previously the proposal to
create a modern-day "Truman Committee" - modeled
after the oversight board run by then-senator
Harry Truman to root out contracting abuses during
World War II - has been blocked from consideration
by Republican leaders for more than a year.
The Iraq war has also had substantial
costs in terms of wear and tear on equipment.
Last year senior Marine Corps officials
admitted that if the war in Iraq ended tomorrow
and their units shipped home, it would cost $12.8
billion to re-equip them with vehicles and gear
lost in combat and through wear and tear. That
outlay would take up a significant portion of the
corps's yearly budget, which in 2004 stood at
nearly $17 billion.
Much of the equipment
deployed in Iraq is beginning to wear out as a
result of heavy use, harsh operating conditions,
and the frequent attacks launched by insurgents.
Furthermore, the quantity and quality of weapons
in units away from the war zone are eroding as
equipment is transferred to deploying units. The
latter problem is particularly pronounced in the
reserves, which already were functioning with a
deficit of modern equipment when the war began.
It was reported in February that the army
is asking for $9 billion to "reset" its
war-depleted stocks - the vast bulk to replace and
repair tanks, helicopters and vehicles. Since the
Iraq insurgency heated up in autumn 2003, the
army's combat losses include about 20 M1 Abrams
tanks, 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 20 Stryker
wheeled combat vehicles, 20 M113 armored personnel
carriers, and 250 Humvees.
The number of
vehicles lost in battle comes to nearly 1,000
after adding in heavy and medium trucks and
trailers, mine-clearing vehicles and Fox wheeled
reconnaissance vehicles. Nearly all these losses
were caused by improvised explosive devices in
Iraq. The army said unfunded repair and
upgrade work alone totals more than $3 billion.
During fiscal 2005 the army deployed 23%
of its trucks, 15% of its combat vehicles and 15%
of its helicopters in Iraq, according to the
Association of the United States Army. Much of
this equipment does not rotate out when troops do,
either because the army is trying to minimize
transport costs or because it wants to retain key
items such as up-armored vehicles in the war zone.
As a result, the equipment is exposed to
continuous use for long periods of time - more
than two years in the case of some Chinook
helicopters - and may not receive scheduled
maintenance in a timely fashion. The army
conducted an analysis of how such stresses affect
field equipment and concluded that a single year
of deployment in Iraq would cause as much wear and
tear as five years of peacetime use.
That
is hardly surprising, given that much of the
equipment in Iraq is being used at a rate several
times as high as typically prevails in peacetime.
The operating tempo, or "optempo", of helicopters
is twice as high in the war zone as elsewhere.
Combat vehicles such as the Abrams tank and
Bradley Fighting Vehicle operate at five or six
times normal rates. And trucks are used at up to
10 times their peacetime rates (which helps
explain why so many are washed out by the end of
their time in Iraq).
But high utilization
rates are only the beginning of the problem,
because the conditions under which systems operate
in Iraq are harsher than those encountered in
peacetime training exercises. For example, Abrams
tanks are designed to operate in open country, but
in Iraq they often travel on paved roads,
accelerating wear. Their mechanical and electronic
systems are exposed to sand, wind, precipitation
and vibration far in excess of what would be
experienced in peacetime. Maintenance is deferred,
or carried out in sub-optimal circumstances. And
then there is the enemy, which seldom misses an
opportunity to shoot a rocket-propelled grenade at
whatever US vehicle is going by.
Considering all the insults visited on
army equipment in Iraq, it is impressive that the
mission-capable rates of ground vehicles such as
Abrams tanks and Humvees have been maintained at
90% in the war zone, and the mission-capable rate
for helicopters is a respectable 77%. But this
high state of readiness is being bought at a
price. The equipment in Iraq is being run down
rapidly, while reserve equipment in the US is
being transferred to deploying units so
extensively that non-deploying National Guard
units have virtually no night-vision goggles,
up-armored Humvees or chemical-agent-detection
equipment.
A June 26 memorandum circulated
on Capitol Hill by Republican Congressman Joel
Hefley, a House Armed Services Readiness
Subcommittee chairman, raised concerns that army
units training at home are so short on equipment
and personnel that they are unready if needed
urgently for Iraq, Afghanistan or potentially any
other crisis that may emerge domestically or
abroad. The document suggested the army had
already deployed units to Iraq and Afghanistan
officially rated at the lowest levels of
readiness.
Fixing and replacing army
equipment alone could run from $60 billion to $100
billion, according to retired General Paul Kern, a
senior consultant to the Cohen Group and the
retired head of Army Materiel Command. The total
cost for wear-and-tear on US equipment is unclear
because it is not known how long US troops will be
needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
David Isenberg is a senior
research analyst at the British American Security
Information Council, a member of the Coalition for
a Realistic Foreign Policy, and an adviser to the
Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for
Defense Information, Washington. These views are
his own.
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