Communities pay a price for Afghan warDate: 12/15/2009 By Mike Briotta
PRIME Editor
GREATER SPRINGFIELD -- There's a bumper sticker that says: "What if schools got all the money they needed, and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?" An area non-profit group aims to answer that question in realistic terms -- by analyzing federal wartime spending in contrast to local budget shortfalls.
The group's focus is on what needs could be addressed close to home, if local tax funds weren't being allocated to fight a war in Afghanistan. According to the National Priorities Project (NPP), taxpayers in cities like Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke and Westfield -- and towns such as Longmeadow and Wilbraham -- are funding the conflict at the expense of their own local priorities.
The NPP states that federal taxes collected from local communities and directed to fighting in Afghanistan could have provided health care to nearly 35,000 Springfield children for one year. Westfield's contribution could have funded some 4,000 scholarships for college students. Longmeadow taxpayers' contribution to Uncle Sam in Afghanistan? That town could have paid all of its 241 full-time equivalent schoolteachers' salaries with extra cash left over.
The research organization, located in Northampton, reports that those budget items and many others would have been paid for if local federal tax monies spent in Afghanistan since 2001 were deposited into local coffers. The NPP asserts that, with total funding for the Afghanistan war set to exceed $325 billion in fiscal year 2010, we are effectively shortchanging our needs at home.
"Obviously we're pro-rating it based on annual approval [of defense department budgets]," said Christopher Hellman, Director of Research with NPP. "We're in fiscal year 2010 at the federal level, but they have yet to approve the defense budget, so we're in a stopgap measure that continues to fund the war at current levels."
Approximate tax totals contributed from each city or town since 2001 are: $40 million from Chicopee; $25 million from Holyoke; $24 million from Longmeadow; $93 million from Springfield; $37 million from Westfield; and $18 million from Wilbraham. Those Afghanistan war figures do not include U.S. war spending in other parts of the world.
While his pledge of sending 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan provided President Barack Obama a temporary boost in recent poll numbers, NPP data denotes that local trade-offs are significant.
According to the non-profit group, the Obama administration would need to return for additional Congressional approval, in the form of a supplemental spending bill, to pay for that recent troop surge. In other words, the 30,000-soldier surge has not yet been accounted for financially, and related costs may exceed current cost-of-war projections.
The group expects costs will increase at an accelerated pace with every new soldier dispatched overseas. The NPP said in a press release, "It has been widely reported in recent weeks that both the Pentagon and the White House estimate that any additional forces sent to Afghanistan will require $1 billion per year for every 1,000 troops sent, or $1 million per soldier."
Hellman added that actual costs could exceed estimates in the near future. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has neither a modern infrastructure of roadways nor a coastline to be used by incoming troops. Therefore, he estimates the costs of flying more troops into a landlocked country and providing armor could quickly push the total price of the surge to more than $40 billion.
"This may all be rolled into an omnibus spending bill," said Hellman. "That would be a $1.5 trillion deficit that incorporates not only defense spending, but also other departments."
Regardless of how the federal government budgets its operations in Afghanistan, the mounting cost continues to rise by about one billion dollars a week, according to the NPP. Their online total for taxpayer funds spent in the Afghanistan war is poised to top $235 billion by next week.
Hellman said his group is not affiliated with any particular political party, lobby or think-tank, but merely wants to present American voters with all the facts about our overseas operations. "We're all about open government," he said. "We've been here for more than 25 years. It started under the Reagan administration, which was the largest peacetime buildup of the U.S. military ever."
A major at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield could not be reached for comment at press time regarding whether or not Afghanistan war spending should take priority over local projects.
A spokesperson for Westover Air Force Base declined to address the issue of funding the war in contrast to municipal needs, but did assert that local movement of troops, supplies and equipment from Westover to Afghanistan helps fight terrorism and saves the lives of U.S. troops.
"We fly C5 [transport planes], which are the largest aircraft in the Air Force," Maj. Jennifer Christovich at Westover AFB, said. "We fly life-saving cargo into Afghanistan, ranging from MRE [Meals Ready-to-Eat] to big equipment like the MRAP [Mine-Resistant Armor-Plated vehicle] to the men and women who are fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan.
"We actively support the war fighters in any way the Commander-in-Chief sees fit," she continued.
Hellman reiterated that his group has no particular political axe to grind, but simply wants to make the public aware of how their tax dollars are being spent.
"We're not necessarily advocating getting out of Afghanistan," Hellman said. "We provide the numbers to give people the tools. The numbers should not be the deciding factor, but it's absolutely clear that this subject should be part of our decisions. If you're spending all this money on one thing, it can't be used somewhere else. It has to affect cities and towns."
A running tally based on his group's "Cost of War" counter is located on the NPP Web site, where the numbers are constantly increasing. Anyone who wants to recalculate these figures should visit www.costofwar.com. From there, click on "tradeoffs" and follow the instructions for your area.
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