Military Money

Representative David Obey and Senator Carl Levin have put forward the idea of a war tax. As the papers put it:

Two senior Democratic lawmakers said they want to impose a new "war surtax" on Americans to pay for any additional armed forces deployed to Afghanistan under Obama's forthcoming decision on the strategy for the eight-year-old war.

"What we are saying is, if this war is worth fighting, then it is worth paying for," Representative David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said Monday.

I realize this has no chance of passing, and Obey and Levin are trying to make a point, but I think it's a great idea. I think we should have a separate, itemized tax for every main category in the budget. We should know what we're paying for. And if you don't like what you're paying for, vote the bums out.

Obey has suggested this tax just be for the wealthy, but that's repugnant. Defense is a public good, so everyone should pay. Besides, does he want everyone else to be ignorant of what the government is doing?