"Over the short term, we are certainly spending a large chunk of money of the wars, money that could be devoted to other priorities or for deficit reduction, at least once the economy improves," noted Josh Gordon, policy director at the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan research group devoted to fiscal discipline.

But over the long term, he stressed, "Our fiscal challenges are substantially larger, and just ending the wars would not change those projections - because they all assume peacetime budgets."