Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for FIscal Year 2009
Floor Speech
DUNCAN HUNTER NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009 -- (House of Representatives - May 22, 2008)
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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a simple, commonsense amendment that requires the President to submit a report to Congress on the long-term costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On June 28 of this year, Chairman Murtha sent a Dear Colleague letter out talking about this very problem and the need to make sure that we are being given accurate information. We have now been engaged in the war in Afghanistan for almost 7 years and the war in Iraq for over 5 years, and the Bush administration has yet to submit a long-term estimate for the costs of the war. The administration has not submitted a cost estimate, despite a statutory reporting requirement for fiscal years 2006 through 2011 that was required in the fiscal year 2005 defense appropriation budget.
As someone who took great interest in the Iraq Study Group report and the massive commitment to the future of Iraq in both blood and treasure, I looked forward to the publication of the Independent Review Group report that was issued in the wake of the Walter Reed Building 18 fiasco.
One of the things that was recognized in that report was the fact that the Nation must recognize that there is a moral, human and budgetary cost of the war. When we engage in armed conflict, we must recognize those costs and be prepared to execute on those obligations.
the Independent Review Group's report, chaired by General Togo West, also identified the four signature wounds of this war: Traumatic brain injury, posttraumatic stress disorder, increased survival of severe burns, and traumatic amputations.
Mr. Chairman, despite the fact that the Bush administration has not provided the required cost reporting, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has published a study talking about these exact costs, not just the long-term medical costs, but the cost of rebuilding our military in the book ``The $3 Trillion War.''
One of the things we know is that young men who are severely injured, many of them age 19 or 20, are going to have permanent injuries from these signature wounds, many of them over a life expectancy that may stretch out 55 or 60 years. We also know that there are life-care plans used by medical economists and prosthetic needs analysis that are used to determine what those long-term costs are. The American people, the American taxpayers, deserve to know what these costs will be.
We have already spent $700 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people of this country deserve to know from the Department of Defense what these long-term costs are going to be over the lifetime of these wounded warriors.
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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for my friend and colleague from California, and I would just like to point out that this is already a subject that has been considered by the Department of Defense.
When we had the hearings in association with Walter Reed and the independent review group, top medical Army officers admitted that they have the capacity using the numbers that are available to make the types of projections that are being considered by this bill.
The two scenarios that we are talking about are based upon illustrative scenarios that the CBO has already used and estimated the long-term costs of this war.
The third estimate allows the administration to base their cost estimates on their own parameters, including the operational costs, the reconstruction costs, the costs to government contractors, private military security firms, and providing lifetime health care and disability benefits for veterans. We know this is done on a daily basis in the private sector, because these types of projections are made for people suffering these very same signature wounds who are injured in automobile collisions and then taken care of by Federal dollars.
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