Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-war-tax-its-still-not-a-bad-idea/2011/08/11/gIQAfJLwHJ_story.html

Anyone who has seen much of this blog, particularly the “All I Know” category knows that I am pretty much anti-war in all regards. So, when I ran across the above article it immediately caught my attention.  Here are some words from the article. Click on the source above to see the whole thing.

These days, one of them, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), believes such a levy should be on the agenda of the debt-reduction “supercommittee.”

“These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in the future,” McGovern said in a recent telephone interview. It’s morally wrong for members [of Congress] to call for support of our soldiers and then not ask the rest of us to pay for it . . . or have it left to the poor and middle-income and seniors to bear the sacrifice along with our soldiers and their families. That’s wrong.”

More than $1 trillion already has been added to the deficit by expenditures generated by Iraq and Afghanistan, the first wars undertaken by U.S. presidents since the War of 1812 that have not been financed in part by a special tax. There were three taxes instituted to pay for the Civil War.

Mr. Bush while he was president put us into two wars at the same time but the worst part was he paid for them via a credit card. That is he took them off the books.  The Republicans in congress didn’t say a peep about that at the time but when he passed his wars along with a imploding banking sector onto the next president, it suddenly became a major issue. Suddenly they think a balanced budget is the only way to keep us out of total chaos. I am a fiscal conservative so I kind of like their new-found religion at least to a degree. But what I definitely don’t like is that they are trying to balance the normal budgets AND the war budgets on the backs of the poor and middle class in the country.  The first thing they attack is the safety net that keeps many of us at least a little secure in these challenging times.

I think Mr. McGovern as cited above is onto something. If we think we need to start a war with another country for any reason then we should pay for it with our dollars.  If it is important enough to send our young people off to die then it is important enough to cost us more in the rest of our pocket books.  I can see no justification for stripping the safety next for the least of us in order to finance our wars.  I got a pretty good idea that if we told the citizens of this country that the war in Iraq was going to cost every American family an extra $30,000 in taxes we would not likely have gotten ourselves into that mess in the first place.

So, how about it. Let’s all contact the “super-committee” and tell them to put a war tax in place to pay for our continuing conflicts in the Middle East.

But what do I know…..