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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

POLL: Should taxes be levied to support wars?

With the media reporting for the eleventeenth time that Obama has, we’re-totally-serious-this-time, made up his mind on what to do about Afghanistan- the question remains on how we’re going to pay for it.

Obviously, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a huge part of our current national deficit, with estimates running from 1.2 to 3 trillion dollars having been spent either directly on, or on operations associated with (such as DoD funding, research, etc). There isn’t enough spending to cut to be able to address those concerns, and no politician, regardless of their political bent, has the stones to commit political suicide and suggest cutting Medicare or Social Security.

So, how about it? Should we start enacting taxes to pay for these things?

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50

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Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 152 Comments

152 comments

  3. fogiv

    The surest way to get Republicans to support military withdrawal:  tax ’em.  It’s exactly why the Bush Scuzministration kept Iraq and A’Stan off the books for all that time.  Had they been forthright about the price-tag for their little desert adventures, they wouldn’t have enjoyed the base support that they did.

    …Or maybe they still would? Now that its more clear how pricey it is to travel to exotic countries and kill the natives, GOP chickenhawks still decry spending at home, but are happy to toss bundles of thousand dollar bills into the furnace.

    Fiscal conservatism sure is fickle, aint it?

  4. DTOzone

    but that can just increase the unpopularity of the war ‘you mean we have to actually PAY for it now too?”

    Maybe it was expidite the end of the war, not that I’m 100% pulling all troops out is the best choice either.

    BTW, did anyone see Jerome’s little rant on the topic at MyDD this morning?

  8. John Allen

    However, the WOT is not a normal war. Normal wars have beginnings and endings. This is more like the war on drugs. There is no way to end it.

    I’ve got a crazy suggestion. Let the people who profit off the war pay for it. That would include any part of the military industrial complex. Another thought is that this war is supposedly beneficial to Israel. I think we should divert the money we send to Israel into the Iraq war fund.

  9. Peter Jukes

    Yes

    No taxation without representation

    So the corollary…

    No representation without taxation

    It’s certainly true that the UK and the US are being heavily ‘represented’ in Afghanistan – though hopefully less often from 10,000 ft as per Spiffy’s poem about the costs of misguided missiles. We should pay for it (which of course we do) but in a direct transparent way.  

  10. hubiestubert

    When we went into Afghanistan and into Iraq.

    Instead, we went on a borrowing frenzy, and those loans were hidden with a ton of other spending, and disguised.

    Now, we have an Administration that is a little more open about such things, but we have to be reminded of the first Bush term. Bush was forced to actually try to pay for the spending that Reagan put us on, and did so at his own peril.

    To his credit, he tried. But the nation really doesn’t like getting the bill.

    What’s entertaining, are the folks who were quite happy to hide the costs and the scope of the conflicts, are suddenly now looking for some kind of responsibility?

    Yes, we need to pay for these things, and that will mean that some folks are going to have to get taxed. And if Obama is wise he’ll call it a Patriot Tax or some other nonsense that the Rabid Right will have to choose whether or not to oppose a tax to fund the troops.  

  12. John Allen

    on mydd that caught my attention. I followed that link fogiv posted and spent a little time looking around. The writer proposes a .25% tax on stock trades. He makes a good argument.

    I’ve seen this mentioned before. I thought a bill imposing such a fee had already been submitted. According to the diary two congressmen have been crafting legislation. This might be worth looking into more fully. It could be an idea I might want to support. I left a comment on mydd inviting him to cross-post the diary here.

  13. HappyinVT

    on Tuesday night at 8pm.  (Limbaugh has “joked” that he hopes the Army will detain the president.)  Anyone going to live blog it?

    Clinton, Gates, and Mullin will follow that up with testimony on Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

    I’m a bit disappointed that the president is apparently going to give McChrystal a significant number of troops (and according to Spencer Ackerman about all the available troops we have) but I’m very anxious to hear what he has to say before I let myself be too let down.  I think I’m letting myself get wrapped up in the number of troops versus what their mission is.  I don’t want to simply throw more men and women at the problem but I’m hopeful 🙂 that the president, who has said he is not going to leave Afghanistan to the next CiC, will set firm goals and then get out.

    BTW, for anyone interested The Washington Note has “the right speech President Obama won’t give on Afghanistan.”  I thought it was worth the read.

  14. louisprandtl

    But I’m little tired of DoD/military being the favorite punching bag of the leftist blogs. The military is fighting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq because the politicians voted to send them there. Both Democrats and Republicans voted in majority to send the military there.

    The decision to go to war is made by the democratically elected President and the Congress. If you seriously want to change the war policies, change the politicians and the power brokers. And btw you haven’t even seen the bill that’s coming in terms just replacement of current vehicles and warfighters.

    In Afghanistan, US and Soviet Russia played the ultimate “Chessboard” ColdWar game in the 80s. We walked away in the 90s. In 2001 we had 9/11 in our hands. Now that country is in still in mess. If we walk away today, do anybody really feel that history wouldn’t repeat itself?  

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