War costs are small part of budget deficit

Its a Democrat talking point that the War is killing the budget, not true at all.

Liberals complain the war has been a big contributor to the nation's budget problems, and are insisting some way be found to pay for the buildup. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they have virtually all been funded by deficit spending, are not the main reason why the publicly held national debt has more than doubled -- from $3.339 trillion to $7.709 trillion -- since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ``It's a small part of the deficit,'' said Todd Harrison, fellow in defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington research group. That's not to say the war costs don't matter. ``Over the short term, we are certainly spending a large chunk of money of the wars, money that could be devoted to other priorities or for deficit reduction, at least once the economy improves,'' noted Josh Gordon, policy director at the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan research group devoted to fiscal discipline. But over the long term, he stressed, ``Our fiscal challenges are substantially larger, and just ending the wars would not change those projections -- because they all assume peacetime budgets.'' ....What's driven the bulk of this decade's deficit boom has been spending growth in programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Human resources, which include those and other domestic programs, consumed 63.8 percent of the budget last year, compared to only 49 percent as recently as 1990. The antidote to high deficits, say independent experts, is making tough choices on domestic spending and taxes. ``The purpose of a budget is to set priorities and make trade-offs,'' said Susan Tanaka, director of citizen education and engagement at the Peterson Foundation, a New York-based fiscal watchdog group.