Kerby Anderson

War is costly. After more than three weeks of military engagement in Iran, critics and even many supporters want to know the costs. The cost in lives has been minimal, though any person who dies in a war is a tragedy. But previous war games done by the Defense Department estimated a much greater loss of life and military hardware. And it’s reasonable to assume that Iran’s military will not be able to threaten its neighbors anytime in the future.

The financial costs to the U.S. are significant, exceeding $1 billion each day. For example, the estimate for the first twelve days was $16 billion. When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked, he said there is no price tag that will make the Iran war unaffordable.

On the one hand, you could argue that you can’t put a price tag on bringing peace to the Middle East. On the other hand, he seems to be saying that whenever we need more money, we can just crank up the money printer.

Let’s talk about something politicians want to ignore. The country is quickly approaching $39 trillion in national debt. Last month, the government brought in $313 billion. That sounds like quite a bit, but the government in that month spent $621 billion. That’s a $38 billion deficit in one month. The deficit over the last six months was $1 trillion.

Here’s something else politicians want to ignore. This year we need to fund $10 trillion of our debt through U.S. treasuries. And the interest rate on these new treasuries is much higher than before, meaning it will cost the government about $400 billion a year in interest.

Yes, war is costly. But few want to talk about the financial costs that are mounting every day.