by Deb Cupples | Yesterday, Time Magazine reported: 
"A trio of recent reports — none by the Bush Administration — suggests that sometime early in the Obama presidency, spending on the wars started since 9/11 will pass the trillion-dollar mark.
"Even after adjusting for inflation, that's four times more than America spent fighting World War I, and more than 10 times the cost of 1991's Persian Gulf War (90% of which was paid for by U.S. allies). The war on terrorism looks set to surpass the costs the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, topped only by World War II's price tag of $3.5 trillion."
"These costs, of course, pale alongside the price paid by the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops who have lost their lives in the conflicts — not to mention the wounded — and the families of all the casualties. And President Bush insists that their sacrifice and the expenditure on the wars have helped prevent a repeat of 9/11...."
"But many Americans may suffer a moment of sticker shock from the conclusions of the CSBA report and similar assessments from the Government Accounting Office (GAO) and Congressional Research Service (CRS), which make clear that the nearly $1 trillion already spent is only a down payment on the war's long-term costs. The trillion-dollar figure does not, for example, include long-term health care for veterans, thousands of whom have suffered crippling wounds, or the interest payments on the money borrowed by the Federal Government to fund the war.
"The bottom lines of the three assessments vary: the CSBA study says $904 billion has been spent so far, while the GAO says the Pentagon alone has spent $808 billion through last September. The CRS study says the wars have cost $864 billion, but CRS didn't factor inflation into its calculations." (Time)
One thing the Time article does not focus on is the added cost due to the Bush Administration's heavy reliance on (and apparent mismanagement of) private contractors.
This matters, because every dollar that goes toward contractor profits is one less dollar for necessary goods and services. Period.
In December 2007, for example, House-Senate conference report expressed concern over the cost of hiring private contractors for national intelligence services. The report states that government employees cost, on average, $126,500 a year -- while contractors' employees cost about $250,000.
In October 2007, the House Oversight Committee probed the scandal-plagued contractor Blackwater, whose CEO told congressmen that about 10% of its $1 billion in federal contracts was profit. (See hearing video.) That's $100 million we taxpayers transferred to Blackwater.
Blackwater reportedly paid its security guards about $600 a day and billed the government $1,200 in some cases. Even if the State Dept. directly hired those same security guards for $600 a day, the taxpayers' costs would drop.
In June 2007, the Washington Post reported that homeland-security contractor Booz Allen charged us taxpayers $42 - $383 per hour for employees: the equivalent of $84,000 - $766,000 per year. President Bush's salary is only $400,000.
In March 2008, the New York Times reported on a private contractor (run by a 22-year-old) that received a $300 million contract and provided bad ammunition (e.g., 40+ years old) to our troops in the Middle East.
In December 2007, USA Today told us that a private contractor had taken $32 million to build barracks and offices in Iraq -- yet nothing was ever built, because the project was abandoned.
Questionable dealings with contractors are not new. One of my all-time favorite examples is the Navy's failure to hold accountable the contractor Northrup Grumman, which had failed to deliver a small hybrid submarine (ASDS) that actually worked -- despite the Navy's having given the company $885 million from 1994-2007 (GAO).
As for sheer waste, let's not forget Vanity Fair's September 2007 story Billions over Baghdad, which told of $12 billion in cash that U.S. officials sent to Iraq -- $9 billion of which is still unaccounted for.
Government contractors are sitting at a huge trough, and it's not just defense contractors. The table below shows how much money just the top-200 federal prime contractors (civilian and defense contracts) have cost us over the past few years.
Table 1. Total Contract Value for Top-200 Contractors
|
2007 |
$425 billion |
|
2006 |
$388 billion |
|
2005 |
$327 billion |
|
2004 |
$290 billion |
|
2003 |
$244 billion |
|
2002 |
$218 billion |
|
2001 |
$203 billion |
|
Total |
$2.09 TRillion |
I don't know how much of that amount went to unreasonably high profits, waste, or fraud.
At any rate, the point is that the cost of the Bush Administration's various wars was likely higher than it had to be simply because of the heavy reliance on government contractors.
Related Buck Naked Politics Posts:
* High Cost of Private Contractors
* Audit of $8 Billion in Contracts: Little Evidence of Completed Work or Oversight
* Shoddy Contractor Work Killing our Troops
* KBR Got $1 Billion in Non-Credible costs
* Contractors Offering Bribes & Kickbacks to Govt. Personnel
* $23 Billion Lost in Iraq Due to Fraud & Mismanagement
* Doan Forced out of General Services Administration
* Inspector General Blocked Probe into Waste and Fraud?
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