America's "War on Terror" is crippling its economy, said an economist for the Center for the Rocky Mountain West.

"I think this is a disaster," said Larry Swanson of Missoula.

"When we finally get out, the lasting legacy of this war will be its extreme cost and a very difficult financial time for our country," he said. Two academic economists — Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics seven years ago — recently estimated that the long-term cost of this war will be between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, fueled by long-term health care costs and the interest payments for fighting on borrowed money.

Swanson said America's national debt stood at $5.6 trillion when President Bush took office, and it's projected to be close to $10 trillion by the time he leaves.

"We're getting into a situation where 25 cents of each discretionary dollar spent by the federal government will be going to debt service," he said.

"That means that debt will begin dictating to the economy," Swanson said. "Our hands are being increasingly tied by the financial condition of the federal government."

Discretionary funds, the money actually appropriated by Congress, pay for ag programs, highways, infrastructure and research.

"There won't be any money left, any discretionary room within the budget, for improvements," Swanson said.

Members of the Joint Economic Committee in Washington, D.C., were told a month ago that the amount being spent on the war — eachday — would be enough to enroll 58,000 students in Head Start, provide Pell Grants to 160,000 more low-income college students or hire 14,000 extra police officers for a year.

The rest of the federal budget is called entitlements, meaning money promised by the government through programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Swanson said he recently had breakfast with outgoing U.S. Comptroller David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), who warned of a $53 trillion shortfall in Medicare and Social Security funding by the end of this century.

"Walker took all these different events one by one, analyzed them and concluded that this is a train wreck," Swanson said.

"And the people making these decisions don't see past next year," he added. "I think that in about 10 years, we're going to be asking these people what in the hell they were thinking."

Originally published March 19, 2008

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