Professor Smartass

David Obey has stumbled upon a way to further sink the GOP.

He warned Obama that if he continued the Afghanistan War, he would institute a ''war surtax'' of 1% for most people and 5% for the wealthiest to pay for it.. He should add a bracket for businesses too.

I would formalize it and add that when ever troops are sent into harms way, the tax is triggered and stays in place until the war is over, and the rates could be adjusted annually depending on the actual cost of the war.

Bush accidentally set the precedent for this when he continually asked for war spending as supplementals instead of as part of his regular budget (so he could claim his budget wasn't creating as big a deficit as it really was).

Republicans in Congress who want to see any war continue as long as possible should be asked if they support such a proposal to pay for current and future wars or whether we should continue to charge our grandchildren for them.

The current cost of our two ongoing wars:

It was around $937 billion when I posted it, so divided by the 308 million people who live in the United States, it would be about $3000, per man, woman and child. That would be lower for most of us if we charged the wealthy a slightly higher percentage than the rest of us.

And that would be on top of what we spend on the military that's in the regular budget.

Separating war spending from the rest of the budget would force Republicans (and business-owned Democrats) to make a Sophie's Choice between two of their cherished policies: endless wars and no new taxes.

I suspect they would try to have it both ways or call for cuts in social programs instead, but since so many people are struggling right now, that might not go over so well.

It would also help people re-connect taxes to actual government action, rather than the current disconnect between what people want, and their GOP pavlovian conditioning to assume any tax increase is bad. Maybe people would start to wonder what percentage of the budget goes to other issues too.

Labels: afghanistan, barack obama, conservatives, cost of war, david obey, democrats, iraq war, military spending, no new taxes, republicans, war tax