Taxing Our Way to Victory in Iraq

Congressman David Obey, D-WI, may have been right in theory about instituting a war tax without even knowing the reasons why. Had he cited history in support of his proposal, there might have been less of a scrap over it. When Obey recently floated the idea of charging taxpayers a surcharge to fund the Iraq War, his idea was pilloried by conservatives and shunned by fellow liberals. Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed her opposition to the war surcharge proposal, but couched it in her overall opposition to the war. She did not clarify whether if this were a war championed by Democrats she would be in favor of a war surcharge or similar vehicle to fund a war. Conservative critiques of Obey’s war tax focused on standard opposition to additional or raised taxes of any kind. Conservatives also denounced Obey’s plan for tying the funding of our troops in the field to tax increases, which they consider a form of political extortion. Soldiers would be unfortunate pawns whose very safety would hinge on a forced surcharge of between two and fifteen percent of taxpayer incomes to support the war.

Rejecting Obey’s proposal outright may be the politically savvy course of action for lawmakers, but does the concept of a war tax, in a different form than Obey's idea, have merit? Readers may think us delirious, but we would support a war tax, albeit not in the form or function that Obey envisions. Later in this post we will explain two forms of this tax that would be sensible and acceptable to fiscal conservatives, if there are any remaining, in both parties.

War surcharges and other special government programs to fund wars are not new and have been used in virtually every war in our nation’s history. Surcharges, bond drives, and tax increases have all been implemented with varying degrees of success to offset the high costs of wars.

Asking Americans to tighten their fiscal belts to sacrifice for war efforts has been the clarion call throughout our history. Government mandated rationing of scrap metals, rubber, and other materials needed for war production were common and accepted. Previous generations understood that war demands sacrifice by the individual for the common good. Of course, taxes are not exactly a sacrifice, since sacrifice implies a voluntary act and each individual may or may not be in favor of a particular tax. Yet in a democratic republic, each taxpayer is at least represented and has a voice in the decision to levy a tax or not.

Wars are inherently the top priority of a nation, and only in an economically spoiled society would citizens expect their quality of life and financial stability to remain stable and comfortable in war time.

Obey’s war surcharge proposal is flawed, not necessarily in what it is intended to achieve, funding the war, but in its premise that funding the war should place an additional drain on taxpayers’ incomes. It is classic liberal ideology to propose an entirely new and separate tax to pay for something rather than identifying programs that could be eliminated and taxes that we already pay that are not being used for their intended purposes.

For example, our Constitution identifies “provide for the common defense” as a fundamental responsibility of the national government, with ample powers granted therein to raise and maintain armed services to accomplish that mandate. Thus taxpayers should assume that the national government would use their tax money to support this basic provision before siphoning off funds for other purposes.

We can find no provision in the Constitution that mentions using taxpayer money to fund public television (PBS), quasi-obscene “art” exhibits and grants (National Endowment for the Arts), federal oversight of local and state education (National Education Association or Department of Education), or AIDS and birth control education including condom distribution (same educational entities as previous). Yet each year Americans pay between fifteen and thirty percent of their incomes to support burgeoning federal spending on these and other programs that venture far beyond the scope and intent of the Constitutional mandate of limited government and the moral beliefs of many taxpayers.

If given a choice, we would rather know that our fifteen to thirty percent taxation is funding an ongoing war than “artistic” displays of upside-down urinals and other questionable “art” funded by government grants. We would rather know that our taxes are providing body armor or a Humvee for soldiers in Iraq than to give rabid liberal journalists like Bill Moyers, but no conservatives, free air time and a national audience on PBS, a government funded television network that reaches every home in America.

Thus a specific tax of two to fifteen percent depending on income levels to support a war (not a surcharge) is not an unreasonable solution as long as congress agrees to fund all other government operations within the existing tax brackets. Thus no citizen's taxes would rise above the thirty percent bracket where most already find themselves mired.

A better proposal would be to establish a specific war tax of two to fifteen percent levied only in war time working in tandem with a ten percent flat tax. In that scenario, the wealthiest citizens would pay no more than twenty-five percent even in war time, and the congress would be forced to do what we all do when money is tight: prioritize and spend only for absolute necessities.

A specific war tax, in combination with the elimination of non-essential government programs, would serve several fundamentally important purposes:

1. Provide a vehicle for funding war needs without increasing taxes.

2. Establish national ownership of a war. If congress levied a war tax, there would be no talk of “Bush’s war,” or “Rumsfeld’s war,” or any specific executive’s war. It would be OUR war and all levels of government and citizenry would have a vested interest in its success.

3. Ensure that war funds cannot be used for non-military expenditures or held hostage by earmarks and pork-barrel projects currently attached to war spending bills.

4. Allow Americans to see precisely what a certain percentage of their income tax is used for. Currently, government coffers are a catch-all followed by a spending free-for-all. No one in the federal government can sit down with a taxpayer and demonstrate what his or her taxes actually paid for. Even Social Security taxes are hijacked and spent for a host of projects unrelated to Social Security. A war tax could be the only tax fund that cannot be used for anything other than its intended purpose. At the conclusion of a war, the specific tax established to fund it would expire and tax refunds could be issued. That is, after all, what should happen when taxpayers loan their money to the government for a specific purpose and the purpose is achieved. Congress would not be allowed to keep that money for a future war, as that form of preparation would already be included in established defense budgets.

5. Teach congress how to make do with the money it receives rather than spending future funds based on projected revenue, even for wars.

Obey’s proposal, if altered to remove its liberal fixation on creating new taxes, appears to have merit and is worthy of serious discussion. While Obey himself may have floated the idea simply to make a point or take a political swipe at President Bush and even some Democratic colleagues who have backed away from cutting off funding for the Iraq War, the concept of a war tax is neither new nor trivial.

Rather than narrowly attacking the allegedly exorbitant costs of the Iraq War and suggesting new taxes to pay for it, Obey and his colleagues should broaden their attack to include wasteful and unconstitutional programs and departments that could be eliminated. That is, if they are as genuinely interested in fiscal responsibility as they claim to be.

Their concern for the finacial burdens placed on taxpayers by the Iraq War would seem much more sincere if it were coupled with a consistent effort to relieve taxpayer burdens by reducing the size and scope of federal government programs and their insatiable budgetary demands.

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