The Ghost Budget: Paying for America’s Wars

The Burlington Quarter will meet at Barnegat Friends Meeting on March 15, 2026. The day’s activities will start with coffee, tea, and a light breakfast at 9:30 am and culminate after lunch with a Zoom presentation at 1 pm by Friend Linda J. Bilmes.

Zoom registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/VuXSIqr6QB2Yj4wG36kGsQ

Professor Linda J. Bilmes is a full-time faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, where she is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer Chair in Public Policy and Public Finance. She serves on the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration. She is co-chair of Economists for Peace and Security, an organization of economists, other social scientists, and citizens concerned about issues of peace, conflict, war, and the world economy.

Professor Bilmes has co-authored multiple books and book chapters, including the international bestseller The Three Trillion Dollar War and has written extensively on the cost of war, veterans’ issues, national parks, municipal budgeting and financial topics. Her new book coming out this fall is The Ghost Budget: Paying for America’s Wars. Read about it in her recent article, The Ghost Budget: U.S. War Spending & Fiscal Transparency in the current issue of the journal Daedalus.