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NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush's chief economic adviser estimates that the U.S. may have to spend between $100 billion and $200 billion to wage an Iraq war, but doubts hostilities would push the nation into recession or sustained inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House's National Economic Council, projected the "upper bound" of war costs at between 1 percent and 2 percent of gross domestic product, the Journal reported. With the U.S. GDP at about $10 trillion per year, that translates into a one-time cost of $100 billion to $200 billion, according...

The Bush administration estimates of what an invasion of Iraq will cost – around $40 billion – doesn’t satisfy Congressional Democrats – they want the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to come up with what they think the real price will be. According to the Washington Post, members of both parties on the Hill are unhappy with the refusal of the White House to take a cold, hard look at the cost of opening a brand new front in the war on terrorism which some estimates peg at as much as $200 billion, the Post reports. Military experts and Capitol Hill...

<p>With estimates of the potential costs of a war with Iraq ranging from $30 billion to $200 billion, and the federal deficit rising past $200 billion, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., is waging a war of his own -- against the administration.</p>

December 31, 2002 White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With IraqBy ELISABETH BUMILLER ASHINGTON, Dec. 30 — The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials.In a telephone interview today, the official, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, also said there was likely to be a deficit in the fiscal 2004 budget, though he declined to specify how large it would be. The...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military planners believe the cost of a war with Iraq could balloon to $95 billion or more, eclipsing earlier estimates, administration and congressional sources said on Wednesday. The White House and Pentagon cautioned that it was impossible to put a dollar figure on the potential invasion and its immediate aftermath because no one knows how long it would take and whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will destroy the country's oil wells as he did Kuwait's in 1991. "In the event force has to be used, it's not knowable how long it would last, what kinds of...

ELEANOR HALL: Well, now as you say, you have produced your own estimates. WILLIAM NORDHAUS: Yes. ELEANOR HALL: What sort of things have you considered in calculating the cost of this possible new war in Iraq? WILLIAM NORDHAUS: One of the things that came out of if that I was quite surprised by was if you actually look at the costs, that the military costs tend to be a very small fraction of the total cost. So when I, when I reckoned the total costs, they ranged, they include obviously the direct military costs, but in addition would be the...

Short Iraq war would cost world $A1 trillion - study FRIDAY , 21 FEBRUARY 2003 CANBERRA: A short war with Iraq could cost the world 1 per cent of its economic output over the next few years and more than $A1 trillion ($NZ1.1 trillion) by 2010, Australian researchers said in a report yesterday. A long war could more than triple the costs, they said. The compounding effects of rising oil prices, extra budget spending and economic uncertainty could cut $A173 billion from the world economy in 2003 alone, said the researchers, Reserve Bank of Australia board member Warwick McKibbin and...

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has begun telling the White House and Congress that defeating Iraq and occupying the country for six months could cost as much as $85 billion, according to sources — considerably more than what senior administration officials have been saying in public. Combined with aid for regional allies such as Turkey, the price tag for the conflict could top the $100-billion mark, twice the war costs cited just last month by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and an amount that the White House dismissed as outlandish last fall. And the tally could rise further. Indeed, some close...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon planners believe the cost of a war with Iraq could balloon to $95 billion or higher, eclipsing earlier estimates, administration and congressional sources said on Wednesday. The White House cautioned that it was impossible to put a dollar-figure on a war and military occupation because no-one knows how long it would last and what measures Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would take to destroy the country's critical infrastructure, including oil wells. "It is too soon to be able to have any type of reliable number," White House spokesman...

WASHINGTON - A possible war with Iraq has so many variables that estimating its cost is impossible, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said after Democrats complained that the White House was not offering an estimate. The surge of U.S. troops into the region around Iraq continued, meanwhile, as the Pentagon (news - web sites) on Thursday dispatched a sixth aircraft carrier and stealthy B-2 bombers to bolster forces already numbering more than 200,000. Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters Thursday alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said trying to come up with a cost for the range of Iraq war scenarios "simply isn't...

LONDON - Despite Iraq (news - web sites)'s enormous oil reserves, experts say money from the sale of Iraqi crude wouldn't cover the costs of rebuilding the country's power plants, bridges and other vital infrastructure after a war with the United States. Twelve years of U.N. economic sanctions have crippled Iraq's oil industry, and any postwar government would need several years and billions of dollars to restore production to what it was in 1990. At the same time, oil prices are expected to fall after any U.S.-led attack, making it harder for Iraq to boost revenues from its No. 1...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The price of a post-war U.S. occupation of Iraq could be so big that some experts fear it would make the cost of combat alone pale in significance. This is especially true because consideration of the war's ultimate price tag, and how to pay it, comes at a time the U.S. government is already awash in red ink. This week, the White House asked Congress for almost $75 billion in extra money to pay for a relatively short war in Iraq. While Congress has yet to set aside...

US's Snow to talk to G7 on sharing Iraq costs ORLANDO, Fla., April 3 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Thursday he wants other Group of Seven allies to help bear the cost of an Iraqi reconstruction effort once the U.S.-led war ends. Speaking to the Orlando Chamber of Commerce, Snow noted that he will meet other G7 finance ministers in Washington next week on the fringes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings and that reconstruction would be on the agenda. "We want to make sure other countries help us," Snow said in...

Iraq war will cost the region trillions, UN Regional-Iraq, Politics, 4/16/2003 The United Nations has predicted that the Middle East region will lose a trillion-dollar over the next decade because of war in Iraq. Mervat Tallawy, executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), said on Monday the commission's 13 Arab members had already lost some $600 billion in the nineties, "and this amount could have secured between six to seven millions job opportunities." Tallawy, who delivered a message by UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, noted during a meeting of the ESCWA Consultative Committee...

The economic costs of war with IraqBy Miriam Pemberton(Testimony before the US Congress, September 13. Republished with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus.) I want to begin with two caveats. The first is that if attacking Iraq clearly fell into the category of a just war, we [the US] should of course spend whatever it would take to wage it. Providing for the common defense is our government's first mandate. But by my reckoning our government has not remotely made the case that this would in fact be a just war. I'll just mention quickly a couple of reasons, which...

With Operation Iraqi Freedom drawing to a close, it's time to examine what the war really cost, in both lives and dollars. At least 157 confirmed coalition deaths have been reported, but the total number of Iraqi deaths is still unclear. President George W. Bush got word from Congress, shortly after the April 11th deadline, that his wartime supplemental appropriations request of $74.7 billion had been approved--a request that 87% of blackenterprise.com subscribers believe will negatively impact the nation's already shaky economy. The funds will cover the cost of military operations, relief, and reconstruction activities in Iraq, as well as...