What Brown’s $8.0 trillion counts beyond the war funding
Source. Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War, U.S. federal budget page; Neta C. Crawford, “The U.S. Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars”, September 1, 2021. Fiscal years 2001–2022; veterans’ care to 2050.
Method and data
Method. Brown’s headline is $8.0 trillion for FY2001–2022. The category figures are the project’s later restatement and overlap, so they do not sum to the headline.
| Category | $ trillions |
|---|---|
| Overseas Contingency Operations (DoD, State) | 2.3 |
| Homeland Security budget, 2002–2025 | 1.1 |
| Interest on war borrowing, through 2022 | 1 |
| Pentagon base-budget increases, attributed to the wars | 0.9 |
| Veterans’ care, paid and owed to 2050 | 2.2 |
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Higgins Strategy. “What Brown’s $8.0 trillion counts beyond the war funding” Exhibit 5, Every Dollar of War (Study IX). October 12, 2026. https://higginsstrategy.com/charts/09-costs-of-war-brown-2021/