The list of questions surrounding the war with Iran is not short, but one of the nagging lines of inquiry involves its price tag: What exactly is this war of choice costing American taxpayers?
Roughly a week after Donald Trump launched combat operations, congressional sources with knowledge of the matter said the war was costing the United States an estimated $1 billion a day. A week later, a congressional source told MS NOW that the administration, during a private briefing for lawmakers, revised that number to $1.6 billion a day.
In the weeks that followed, the White House decided it no longer wanted to talk about the financial costs and refused to offer even vague answers.
More than two months after Donald Trump approved the military offensive, the Republican administration finally gave the public a dollar amount. MS NOW reported, as part of Wednesday’s live blog coverage:
Jules Hurst III, the chief financial officer of the Defense Department, said Trump’s war on Iran has cost the United States “about $25 billion” so far, most of which has been spent on munitions.
Hurst said the Pentagon will submit a supplemental funding request to Congress “once we have the full assessment of the cost of the conflict.”
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the panel’s ranking member, responded, “I’m glad you answered that question, because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time. No one’s given us the number.”
It was a step in a constructive direction. But before moving forward with that stated dollar amount, it’s worth pausing to assess Hurst’s answer fully.
To state the obvious, fair-minded observers would agree the most important cost in any war is the human cost, and this avoidable conflict has already taken a brutal toll. But given the role of political leaders in shaping the war’s future, it’s also important to acknowledge that this is an election year and that many congressional Democrats have already seized on the growing financial costs of the unpopular war as a campaign issue.
With this in mind, spending $25 billion in two months for an unnecessary war is extraordinary — it’s more than double what the country spends per year on the FBI, for example — and the price tag can only grow as the conflict continues.
A related question, meanwhile, hangs overhead: Is $25 billion a reliable figure, especially given the early daily estimates?
MS NOW’s Chris Hayes noted during Wednesday’s hearing that it seems “a near-certainty” that the estimate “is way, way too low.”
Soon after, a CNN report based on three sources noted that the $25 billion estimate “is a lowball figure that does not include the cost of repairing extensive damage suffered by US bases in the region.”
During the hearing, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California voiced skepticism of the stated price tag, calling the estimate “totally off.” Put another way, it’s probably best to take the $25 billion figure with a grain of salt as the debate continues.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post The problem(s) with Team Trump’s new price tag for the war with Iran appeared first on MS NOW.
