Norms Impact
How We’re All Now Paying the Price for the Myth of Trump’s Competence
A president is treating regime change like an appointment power while launching a massively unbudgeted war—normalizing executive war-making untethered from democratic fiscal and institutional restraints.
Mar 9, 2026
Sources
Summary
The Iran war has cost roughly $891 million per day and is projected to exceed $10 billion early Wednesday, with much of the spending not previously budgeted, including munitions costs.
Senior administration figures are publicly signaling escalation while the president speaks as if the United States can determine Iran’s next leader, despite leaked intelligence indicating regime change could take a long time.
The practical consequence is rapid fiscal and economic spillover—higher gas prices, market declines, and weak job growth—while the war’s duration and cost remain open-ended.
Reality Check
When the executive branch normalizes war spending that was not previously budgeted while publicly implying the United States can pick another nation’s leader, we train the country to accept unilateral conflict as routine governance. That precedent weakens separation-of-powers guardrails by shifting life-and-death national decisions into presidential messaging, not durable authorization and transparent budgeting. Over time, this conditions the public to tolerate open-ended military commitments whose costs and timelines are unknowable, while the accountability mechanisms meant to constrain them erode into after-the-fact rationalizations.
Detail
<p>The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a paper estimating the Iran war’s cost at $891 million per day, projecting total costs to surpass $10 billion early Wednesday. The paper states most of this spending was not previously budgeted, with significant costs tied to munitions; it cites Patriot interceptor missiles at close to $4 million each. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is described as indicating the operation is ramping up.</p><p>Donald Trump told U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the weekend that the war was “already won.” Over the same period, a prewar intelligence report was leaked to two Washington Post reporters stating that the National Intelligence Council assessed that dislodging Iran’s regime could take a long time, with a cited rate of $37 million per hour that could rise, particularly if ground troops are involved.</p><p>The context also includes reported economic effects during the first week: gas prices rising about 60 cents per gallon, the Dow falling 453 points on Friday, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting a loss of 92,000 jobs in February.</p>