Posted on 09/22/2002 8:03:17 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The Bush administration estimates of what an invasion of Iraq will cost – around $40 billion – doesn’t satisfy Congressional Democrats – they want the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to come up with what they think the real price will be.
According to the Washington Post, members of both parties on the Hill are unhappy with the refusal of the White House to take a cold, hard look at the cost of opening a brand new front in the war on terrorism which some estimates peg at as much as $200 billion, the Post reports.
Military experts and Capitol Hill staff both say the estimates are based more on guesses than on realistic analysis. "It goes back to the entire philosophy that if you go to war, you worry about the bills later James W. Dyer, Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee told the Post.
Figures cited by the administration, critics say, are optimistically vague. Pentagon officials have told Congress the cost could be anywhere from $50 billion to $100 billion, The Post says that officials also said it could be as little as half the $61 billion cost of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, or $40 billion in current dollars.
Democrats suspect that the administration may be deliberately underestimating the true cost to build support for an operation that could involve a long occupation and plenty of rebuilding a conquered Iraq, costs not included in Pentagon figures.
"They need to be a lot more open about what the downside risks might be," Scott Lilly, the House Appropriations Committee's Democratic staff director told the Post.
As a result of their misgivings, Democrats on the House and Senate Budget committees asked the CBO on Friday to draft estimates for multiple fighting scenarios and durations.
"The estimate should be constructed and displayed in full recognition of the many significant uncertainties that currently exist regarding how a military campaign against Iraq might unfold, and what stabilization and reconstruction might entail," wrote Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
The Post says the Pentagon is telling lawmakers an Iraqi invasion would require about 250,000 troops, with Britain supplying as many as 30,000. Pentagon planners also are developing what they are calling a "light option" of 70,000 to 80,000 troops.
Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill told the Chamber of Commerce in Portland, Maine, last week: "Whatever it is that's finally decided to be done, we will succeed and we can afford it."
And OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. has said any decision by Bush could be managed, in part by "rotating resources from things that are of less than life and death importance to meet the life and death imperatives of the moment."
White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey told the Wall Street Journal in an interview last week that an "upper bound" cost of a war would be between 1 and 2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. That translates to $100 billion to $200 billion.
The Post reports that no matter what the cost Democrats will go along because they fear the political consequences of opposing the president in this matter. Lawmakers, the Post added fear there could be a political backlash from even asking about cost. "We're all just scared to death of this issue," a Democratic aide told the Post.
Most experts say a detailed cost estimate is next to impossible now, and estimates on previous conflicts have always been wrong.
Scott R. Feil, co-director of the Association of the U.S. Army's Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month that keeping the peace after overthrowing Hussein would take 75,000 U.S. troops and $16.2 billion a year. But actual rebuilding could be a wash, because reconstruction could be funded by selling Iraqi oil, congressional and independent experts told the Post.
So what will an invasion of Iraq and its aftermath cost? It seems that nobody knows, or for that matter, much cares.
A lot less now than it would ten years from now.
less than to rebuild a nuked-out newyorkcity
How very true... if you know this already, Mr. Limbacher, why are you babbling on for an entire article?
This article is a keeper.
Who complains about ANYTHING big government spends on? The left will whine about the $87 billion in Iraq but some of that oil will come back to us.
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