Nov 23rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Obey Calls for War Tax
Back in October, David Obey floated the radical idea that war spending in Afghanistan should be put in a “normal” budgetary context and put in the same fiscal constraints as health reform. Today he’s taken that idea one step further and said an escalation in Afghanistan should be paid for via a “war surtax” on high-income households.
It’ll be interesting to see how far he goes with this. Does he put together a bloc of progressive legislators who say they’ll only back a tax-financed version of the war? Would any Blue Dog budget balancers join such a group?
47 Responses to “Obey Calls for War Tax”
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November 23rd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Like all serious good-government proposals, the war tax will no doubt evoke laughter in congressional offices.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
To your last question: never in a million years. Because in politics appearance is everything, and reality is worthless. The optics of supporting a “war tax” would be the political equivalent of a drinking a bottle of cyanide.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
To echo rmwarnick, all serious good government programs are dismissed by DC insiders as unserious.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Friggin commie. It’s unseemly to tax the most productive members of the society at the time of war.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I know the rich. If they have to pay for wars, we will not have any. Conservatives and progressives have some commonality. When something they want done by Congress is stupid, they ask the middle class to pay for it. Rich people generally have more brains to fall for that shit. Reagan, lil Bush, Pelosi; when they want taxes applied only to the middle class you know they are about to blow a bazillion dollars.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
War surtax: I like it. When I first read this post’s title, I flashed on an imagined graphic from Shephard Fairey.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Good luck with that. Rich people never pay for the wars they create, they only profit from them.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
And about the flip-flop, one more thing that makes McCain is not elected. And,
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I like it. When I first read this post’s title, I flashed on an imagined graphic from Shephard Fairey.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Good for Obey!
Now just watch the PNAC/AIPAC/Neocon crowd scream.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
When I first read this post’s title, I flashed on an imagined graphic from Shephard Fairey.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I like it. When I first read this post’s title, I flashed on an imagined graphic from Shephard Fairey. hslp mee plz
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Why a tax on the rich, let’s make it a tax on everyone.
Moreover, let’s not stop there. Let’s charge people upfront for unfunded liabilities and balance our budget every single year. If we’re running short, we can tax or cut programs.
I don’t see why the logic behind an idea like this is rejected when it comes to social programs. What’s good for the goose ought to be good for the gander. So, folks on the left, you want to tax war…Great! I’m all for it. But we ought to tax all of the other programs that we spend money on rather than pushing them off to our kids.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
2010 is going to be interesting enough with Bush’s tax cuts expiring.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
And as for the rich pushing for war, tell me, was it just the top 1% in this country, and the lawmakers that they voted for, that supported Iraq and Afghanistan? If anything the fault for these wars lies with the millions of folks that tend to be poor and don’t vote. Iraq in particular, is a case of the American people being vamboozeled and then doing nothing about it. Wars have nothing to do with the rich. They have far more to do with the lower classes electing the same morons that fall into line.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Putting wars into the regular budget should be done. The tough part would be enduring the shouting from FOX & the usual suspects, “ZOMG, the Democrat Party is increasing spending!!11!!”
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
“Wars have nothing to do with the rich.”
Bullshit. Yes, the poor have to vote for it, but they are easily manipulated. Tell them there’s some scary country with brown people, and they’ll want to bomb them. The rich know that and they’ll capitalize on it. We could invent a country that doesn’t even exist and half our country would support a war against it. Half our country already couldn’t locate the real countries we’re fighting in on a map. Or even say what continent they’re on.
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
So, we make an open-ended multi trillion dollar investment in finding weapons of mass destruction in the desert…and that’s money so well spent we shouldn’t think about doubling down on it again and again and again.
And another trillion or so in Afghanistan to not catch the guy who killed thousands of Americans, again, that’s the kind of investment where we shouldn’t think twice before pouring in billions more?
But an investment in the health of millions whose absolutely worst-case scenario is healthier, more productive people (and whose best case scenario is saving billions or even trillions), that’s the kind of thing where we should endlessly agonize over every nickel?
There is something very wrong with the way we make investment decisions in this country. It’s like we’re listening a little too closely to 13 year old boys who think guns are COOL!
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
There is something very wrong with the way we make investment decisions in this country.
But the GOP has refused to pay for their policies since Nixon. Take a look at this graph of spending in real dollars and you can see the line always goes up under Republican presidents, while it remained flat under Carter and Clinton.
BTW, you have to shift this graph one year to the left. For example, they are “crediting” Obama with the monumental debt left behind by Bush’s last budget. Since Obama has never signed a budget, it’s incorrect to saddle him with Bush’s debt. This also properly takes away the lowest spending years from Reagan and George W, and properly takes away a high spending year at the start of Clinton’s administration.
Republicans – The party of “borrow and spend” for nearly four decades
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:05 pm
The Democrats have been playing into the Republicans’ hands on framing tax issues for so long that I just want to bludgeon myself. Look: there is no such thing as a tax on high-income households. Everybody lives by the same tax code. If Bill Gates decided to make the same income I did next year, he and I would have the same tax liability. We’re not singling out people here.
Progressive taxation is the taxing a specific activity: hoarding of money. We do it for a damned good reason — take a look around at the smoldering remains of the middle class and it’ll hopefully become obvious. Given that we now have nearly 30 years of evidence that Kemp-Roth did exactly nothing to bolster economic growth, but so much to drive up income inequality, can we please talk about repealing it now? Somebody? Anybody? Bueller?
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Uh, because the war does not benefit me or mine or just about any person in middle-quintile (and lower) income brackets?
Do you have a comprehensive list of what they are, who benefits, and what they cost?
The problem with this observation is that the logic behind the idea isn’t rejected. Stuff like SS and Medicare are funded off of general payroll taxes, and these tax burdens fall almost entirely on the lower 4/5 of the population.
This can’t be emphasized often enough – the rich whining about their ‘unfair’ tax burdens is like someone whining that he paid 70% of the lunch tab while failing to mention that his lunch was 85% of the bill. He’s having four martinis, a 32 oz. steak and the dessert cart. You’re having a salad, grilled cheese, and water. And you’re kicking in some extra moollah because he can’t cover his own expenses . . . and his tip as well, so that he won’t look stingy.
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Progressives should have been behind the “war tax” idea long ago, but not just on the rich. There should be an Iraq/Afghanistan Gas Tax. Fund the wars in real time, make people realize what the wars cost, and help break the dependence on foreign oil.
But let’s be patriotic — any member or former member of the military gets to deduct the Gas Tax from income tax at the end of the year.
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
rmwarnick and Rob Mac: Ummm… what is David Obey’s job? I mean, where is his office?
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Why stop at the future war costs? How about enacting one to actually pay for the previous administration’s wars?
Call it the “Fiscal Responsibility for George W. Bush’s Wars Tax”. Calculate the price tag of the past eight years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Find a nice progressive tax to pay for it in, say, five years. Put a sunset in the bill that says as soon as the calculated cost of the war over the past eight years is met, the tax expires. Pass it.
Revenues collected are non-fungible to pay off whatever we’ve borrowed to fund those two conflicts. If it’s paying off what we owe ourselves, all the better.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Progressives should have been behind the “war tax” idea long ago…
I was advocating it back in 2006 and 2007, not as a funding mechanism but as the obvious leverage for Congress to bring a swift end to the Iraq occupation. That presumably is what Levin and Obey are trying to achieve now, to pressure Obama not to escalate further in Afghanistan.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Here’s a modest proposal.
Instead of a tax on the rich, call up the draft. But allow anyone who wants out the option of paying $500,000.
The rich would pony up, no complaints.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Invoking conscription is more effective, than any monetary tax, b/c when there’s skin in the game, people will move from rhetoric to action… Just don’t require my Marine Corps to comply with said draft….
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
An excellent idea. As others have said, probably too good to be taken seriously by belt-way bozos.
I think everyone, not just high earners, should be taxed. Only exception should be people who’ve served in wars. All others should pay …. all others should be forced to ponder the reality of war, the costs (fiscal and personal), and to accept the responsibility for those costs. War is obsolete. The sooner we (as a nation) “get that”, the better.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Martin: conscription, at first glance, sounds good. But, the rich and powerful too often manage to avoid the draft, or “real duty” if drafted.
Maybe both surtax and conscription.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:12 am
One significant word is all that’s needed Rep. Obey and Senator Levin.
Bring in the *DRAFT*!
November 24th, 2009 at 7:53 am
I like this idea on some level, and I’ve always liked David Obey, but I’m beginning to get weary of the general idea that there’s some quick way of short-circuiting our tendency to make war.
The way to stop starting all these wars is just to stop! War spending isn’t unsustainable any more than any other type of spending. We could keep doing this basically forever. It’s just wrong.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I’ve called for this for YEARS, starting in 2006 when the House returned to Democratic control.
Very simply: a tax on oil company profits specifically to support Iraq (and Afghanistan). Yes, there would be much whining in high places. Attach it to a war-funding bill, and if vetoed (remember, this was a Bush-era plan), jack up the rate by a point and send it back up. Repeat as needed.
Needless to say, our elected representatives were too spineless to even think of such a thing, back then. Now?
November 24th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Here’s a modest proposal.
Instead of a tax on the rich, call up the draft. But allow anyone who wants out the option of paying $500,000.
It’s what actually happened in the civil war. Except the amount was something like 300 bucks. And they actually did raise taxes anyway.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:22 am
The hypocrisy is blinding. Yeah, it’s the rich that are stealing money from the poor and the rich that are starting wars and fooling everyone else. Well, I’m not rich, nor have I been fooled. Why am I, and nearly everyone else in this forum the aberration? Is it genetic, or is it just because we spend our time trying to garner all of the facts rather than focusing on something less important to the Republic and to the lives of thousands of our fighting men and women?
As for the rich taking money from others, can’t say I buy that either. No rich people are taking money from me. What the rich get paid is based on the system we have, which punishes the creation of wealth through absurd progressive taxation. Ever noticed how your progressive taxation doesn’t put a dent in the number of rich people in this country, but yet the middle class keeps getting smaller and smaller? Maybe that has something to do with the fact that you’re taxing the middle class too much.
This class warfare is an excuse that has gotten you guys no where. You can’t take responsibility for the fact that your constituency doesn’t vote, doesn’t pay taxes, and YET, doesn’t grow…despite the wealth of handouts and programs that you’ve given them over the years. The folks that are getting screwed because of your lame ideas are people like me.
Perhaps that’s why the left is once again on the decline, because their promises are all smoke and mirrors.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:30 am
[...] wondered yesterday how serious David Obey was about the idea of paying for the Afghanistan war with higher taxes. Today the answer seems to be [...]
November 24th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Well, I’m not rich, nor have I been fooled.
Indeed you have been.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
We had a strong middle class under Eisenhower and Kennedy. The top tax bracket for Eisenhower’s term was 90% and 77% for Kennedy’s.
The middle class started declining under Reagan. At the beginning of his term, the top tax bracket was 70%. By the end of his two terms, it was 28%.
Clinton’s top tax bracket was 39.6%. Bush the lesser’s was 35%.
For every year the top tax bracket has declined, so has the middle class. And yet you can look at these extremely clear numbers and claim that we need to lower taxes even more.
So my question to you is, are you stupid or just insane?
November 24th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Ever noticed how your progressive taxation doesn’t put a dent in the number of rich people in this country, but yet the middle class keeps getting smaller and smaller?
Well, I guess if it were the tax code re: personal income doing it, that might be an issue. But since it’s actually been more of a case of Republican policies helping the rich get richer but everyone else not, then I would say you’re approximately clueless.
And, by the way, the logic of your “point” is dubious at best. If progressive taxation is not putting “a dent in the number of rich people in this country”, then the same should be true for the middle class, and so on down the economic scale, because the income tax burden decreases as your income decreases.
So, thanks for the straw man, but you’re really not making any sense.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:29 am
So my question to you is, are you stupid or just insane?
Well, dishonest is always a possibility. I mean, he is parroting a Rethug talking point, so dishonesty is usually a natural follow-on from that.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Mnemosyne -
Whatever you do, don’t bring up median income, since it barely advanced under the Bushes. And, from Reagan until now, Clinton’s Admin came the closest to meeting inflation. Bush I and II? Barely a 2% increase for each of their reigns. Impressive!
Thank FSM rich people didn’t suffer under the Bushes, though!
November 24th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Ed Smithe wrote, I don’t see why the logic behind an idea like this is rejected when it comes to social programs.
LOL! As commenter ScentOfViolets pointed out, things like SS and Medicare are largely already paid for, by highly regressive taxes.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Ed Smithe wrote, As for the rich taking money from others, can’t say I buy that either. No rich people are taking money from me.
Of course they are. You clearly have no understanding of the concept of “economic rent,” or of how the collection thereof by parasitic private entities and persons—enforced by government—is a grotesque violation of liberty, or of the economic fact that most if not all rent is accrued by the wealthy, or of the empirical fact that it’s a rather large chunk of GDP.
You might consider actually learning some economics before speaking of things you’re laughably ignorant of.
Well, I’m not rich, nor have I been fooled.
Of course you’ve been fooled.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Ed Smithe wrote, Ever noticed how your progressive taxation doesn’t put a dent in the number of rich people in this country, but yet the middle class keeps getting smaller and smaller?
That’s because the overall tax structure in this country isn’t progressive.
Furthermore, rents—particularly land rent—are often taxed lightly or not at all.
Also, tax falling on income will almost by definition unduly burden the middle class, since their ratio of income to wealth (which is measured by net assets, not income) is rather high.
Finally, the tax code is complicated because of the presence of loopholes designed, mostly, to benefit the rich.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I already oppose both wars. Making me pay more in taxes to pay for these wars isn’t going to make me more anti-war. It might make me very anti-Obey.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Mike makes a pretty good macro point. This would be a good constitutional amendment – make politicians pay for their wars as they fight them, with unpopular tax increases.
I’m not sure exactly what it accomplishes now. Both wars are already waning in popularity. Adding an unpopular tax onto an unpopular war seems more likely to impact the popularity of those levying the tax than to impact the popularity of the war.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Adding an unpopular tax onto an unpopular war seems more likely to impact the popularity of those levying the tax than to impact the popularity of the war.
I think that’s probably the point. It sounds like he’s trying to play a game of “chicken” with the Blue Dogs. The idea being: since they’re unlikely to hold back funding for Afghanistan, and unlikely to levy a war tax, then they should not apply a double standard to HCR, since it could be argued that it’s as important to the country as Afghanistan is.
November 29th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
[...] shouldn’t the wars we fight be deficit neutral? C’mon, all you so-called fiscal conservatives, explain that one to [...]