Search Engine The Cost of War
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Apr 17, 2026 
Linda Bilmes, a Harvard public finance scholar who studies war’s hidden price tag, explains how governments bury the real cost of conflict. She gets into emergency funding tricks, the Pentagon’s accounting blind spots, debt-funded wars, trillion-dollar bills, pricey missiles vs. cheap drones, and the decades-long tab for veterans’ care.
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Emergency War Funding Made Iraq Look Temporary
- The Iraq War looked cheaper because the U.S. funded it through recurring emergency appropriations instead of normal budgeting.
- Linda Bilmes says this hid likely deficits and kept implying the war might end next year even after years of bases and troops.
The Pentagon Still Cannot Fully Account For Itself
- Pentagon war accounting is unreliable because the department still cannot fully reconcile or track huge portions of its assets.
- Linda Bilmes says secret programs are only a small slice; the broader problem is incompatible systems across Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Borrowing Removed A Basic Brake On War
- U.S. wars became easier to start when leaders stopped pairing them with tax hikes or domestic cuts and shifted to debt.
- Linda Bilmes contrasts post-9/11 borrowing with earlier wars when Congress held hearings and presidents raised rates as high as 92%.