Thursday, October 25, 2007

Costs of war(s)

Greg Mankiw reports the appropriations figures for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why was there a dip in 2005?

3 comments:

RiceIR4Life said...
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RiceIR4Life said...

Couple reasons I think. First, Iraq held its first national elections in early 2005, so it's likely that there was a dip in appropriations because the first wave of the Iraqi war had ended and most of the sectarian violence had been contained since elections were held successfully (of course, we know the violence started back up again recently). So, Congress probably felt they could pull back on funding a bit since things seemed to be going OK...
The real reason I think is domestic politics here. 2005 was the last calendar year before the 2006 midterm elections, so I think a lot of Representatives and Senators acted strategically and chose not to fund the war so that they could campaign as anti-Bush and anti-war. But what do I know, I barely graduated high school.

Anonymous said...

I just did a blog post on the cost of war, from the view of economists and the American economy - and thought you might be interested in it. You can check the post out at:
http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2007/11/his_war_costs_much_more_than_w.html

I love you site and come here often.

Simone Davis