Iraq Burn Rate > $12 billion per month?
Submitted by Econbrowser
That’s what’s implied by the graphic in today’s NYT article, based on CBO data.
Source: D. M. Herszenhorn, “Estimates of Iraq War Cost Were Not Close to Ballpark,” NYT, March 19, 2008.Given approximately $150 billion spent in FY2008, the burn rate is $12.5 billion per month, which is even higher than the “Hi” estimate I calculated in this post.
The article is worth reading; one excerpt:
“Under reasonable scenarios, assuming we don’t pull out rapidly, we may only be halfway through,” said Steven M. Koziak, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a nonpartisan research group. “Even in direct budgetary costs, it’s quite easy to get up on the order of $1 trillion for Iraq alone.”
If that comes to pass, then Mitch Daniels’ estimate of the cost of the Iraq war will only be off by a factor of 20, or 1900%. Note that interest costs are not included here. Some estimates are imbedded in this post’s graphics.
Fortunately, we can expect political progress soon…or maybe not (remember, the oil law’s passage was one of those critical “benchmarks” the President spoke of).
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