Official war appropriations exclude huge unacknowledged costs like veterans care and interest

Evidence

The official 107.5 billion war appropriations figure for fiscal year 2012 is itself arguably a significant underestimate. There are many other costs of war that Congress does not include in the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, including medical and disability care for veterans, interest payments on past appropriations, and perhaps even additions to the Department of Homeland Security budget necessitated by the increased threat of terrorist attacks launched in response to U.S. military actions. Using numbers provided by Brown University's Costs of War project, such considerations might have brought the actual war spending total to almost 130 billion in 2012 alone. Future costs for veterans’ medical and disability care would bring the total even higher. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 645

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the Costs of War project data and the broader theme of hidden military costs recurring in this book and in budget-hawk policy discussion.