Linda J. Bilmes, an expert in budgeting and finance, will speak about the monumental costs of the Iraq war at UCSF on Wednesday, March 5.
Bilmes co-wrote
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (W. W. Norton & Company) with Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Their book looks at the price tag of the US involvement In Iraq and Afghanistan and reveals for the first time a litany of costs - the vast majority financed through borrowing - that have been hidden from US taxpayers.
The lecture, organized by the Iraq Action Group and open to the public, is scheduled for noon to 1 p.m. in Clinical Sciences Building, room 701, on the UCSF Parnassus campus.
The Iraq Action Group at UCSF is an alliance of students, faculty and staff united to educate each other, the campus community and the public about the health effects of the Iraq war on American and Iraqi citizens and soldiers.
In their new book, Stiglitz and Bilmes also report the huge costs required to restore the military, whose equipment and supplies have been depleted by the war. And they calculate the cost of the medical care and disability compensation that the nation owes returning veterans.
Bilmes has testified at several congressional hearings regarding the costs of the Iraq war, including those of the US House of Representatives Budget Committee, Veterans Affairs Committee, and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs. She holds BA and MBA degrees from Harvard University.
Bilmes is a now a full-time faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she teaches budgeting, applied budgeting and public finance.
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She is widely considered one of the leading experts in US budgeting and public finance. She has held several senior positions in government, including assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the US Department of Commerce, deputy assistant secretary of commerce for administration, and US representative to several high-ranking commissions, including a Treasury Department commission to examine the viability of the Inter-American Investment Corporation. She was recently appointed to the National Parks Centennial Commission. Previously, Bilmes spent eight years with the global management consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group, where she focused on industrial strategy and transition to market-based democracy in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Bilmes is a faculty affiliate with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.
At Harvard, Bilmes runs an innovative program to assist local cities and towns with their financial health, leading teams of graduate student volunteers who work in the communities. She also conducts the Harvard Institute of Politics budgeting workshops for newly elected mayors and members of Congress.
Bilmes has written extensively on financial and budgetary issues, including the cost of the Iraq war, veterans' health and disability costs, state and local employee pensions, and federal workforce reform. She is the author of
Soldiers Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: The Long-term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care and Disability Benefits and co-author (with Joseph Stiglitz) of
The Economic Costs of The Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict. Her book
The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service (co-authored with W. Scott Gould) will be published in June 2008.
Bilmes is a regular commentator on financial topics. Her articles have appeared in the
New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and the
Atlantic Monthly. She is frequently interviewed on TV and radio programs, including the
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Bilmes was recently featured in Charles Ferguson's award-winning documentary film about Iraq,
No End In Sight.
Photo by Dominick Reuter
Related Links:
Iraq Action Group
