Washington DC: The Unaffordable And Unnecessary War Capital of the World, Part 2

Since WWII was arguably the nation’s last “good war”, an illuminating way to measure the folly that has unfolded during the seven decades since then is to unpack the cost of veterans disability compensation and medical care by cohort of war service. The following figures are extremely conservative and exclude survivors, dependents, pensioners, housing, education and other VA benefits. But they do encompass roughly $180 billion or 52% of the current $346 billion per year Veterans Administration (VA) budget.

The disability compensation cost for each cohort is detailed by the VA, while the cost of medical care is assumed to be equal to the current annual average of $8,200 for each of the 9.18 million enrollees. Self evidently, the $286 million cost for WWII beneficiaries is a rounding error.

Number of beneficiaries and current budget cost for Disability Compensation And Medical Care:

• WWII: 11,488 vets and $286 million.

• Korean War: 59,092 vets and $1.4 billion.

• Vietnam Era: 1,385,131 vets and $44.3 billion.

• Gulf War era: 3,374,670 vets and $112.1 billion.

• Other Peacetime: 831,932 vets and $20.5 billion.

• Total: 5,662,273 vets at an average of $31,705/beneficiary= $179.5 billion.

For want of doubt, it is now nearly universally agreed that the two Iraq wars were sheer folly in which upwards of $1.5 trillion was wasted, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or injured by these pointless invasions and occupations. Yet the compensation and medical care cost for the 3.375 million disability beneficiaries of this cohort currently totals $112 billion per annum.

While that figure seems exceedingly large by any standard, it is evidently driven by the huge number of beneficiaries, not the $33,480 cost for each. As it happens, fully 41% of the 8.193 million Gulf War Era veterans are on disability—a reminder that Washington’s Forever Wars are no less a human meat-grinder than the historic wars that have gone before, and not withstanding all the high tech battlefield safeguards now available.

In any event, given an average life expectancy of 75 years the Gulf War Era vets alone will generate deferred costs in current dollars of purchasing power (FY 2024 $) equal to about $5.6 trillion (50 years at $112 billion per year).

That’s right. The deferred cost of just one set of pointless Forever Wars amounts to 155% of the entire regular military budget of Russia on an annual basis; and on a lifetime basis, it’s actually equal to 17% of the entirety of the nation’s current towering public debt of $34 trillion!

Needless to say, Washington’s budgetary green eyeshades are happy to keep these staggering deferred costs out of the so-called “defense budget” entirely. Under proper accounting, of course, the lifetime cost of disability compensation and VA medical care would be amortized over each person-year of combat deployments.