OK, so that's a group I just made up. But the point is that the cost of continuing to house, feed, and try suspected terror detainees at Gitmo is high, a point President Obama made in his press conference today. In response to a question about military tribunals and civilian courts, the president said this almost as an afterthought:
And by the way, just from a purely fiscal point of view, the costs of holding folks in Guantanamo is massively higher than it is holding them in a supermax maximum security prison here in the United States.
How much exactly? The administration says that at $150 million, it costs double what it would cost to hold them here in the U.S. in facilities, which, the president points out, have successfully held international terrorists without a single escape. That's not counting the $500 million in renovations that helped the camp become a much more humane and hospitable place, so that conservatives could run around reminding everyone that America treats the people it holds indefinitely without trial better than other countries that do so.
Now as far as the deficit is concerned, this isn't much. But as long as Jon Chait is arguing that Democrats should be open to cutting Social Security as part of a "balanced package of deficit reduction" it seems to me that closing Gitmo should also be on the table. Maintaining court facilities, residences, flying down lawyers, translators, and journalists -- it's not free money.
