{"id":9908,"date":"2007-02-12T15:06:01","date_gmt":"2007-02-12T20:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9908.html"},"modified":"2007-02-12T15:06:01","modified_gmt":"2007-02-12T20:06:01","slug":"liebermans-war-on-terrorism-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/liebermans-war-on-terrorism-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Lieberman’s ‘war on terrorism tax’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Lieberman, for all of his offensive Republican tendencies, still seems to have a little fiscally-responsible Democratic voice in his head, wondering how the country can afford to pay for Bush’s foreign policy. My friend Cliff Schecter noted<\/a> today that Lieberman even went so far as to propose a solution that his new GOP buddies probably won’t care for.<\/p>\n

This may come off as blasphemy, but I support the latest idea of Joe Lieberman. I want him to propose a “war tax<\/a>” on the floor of the Senate.<\/p>\n

I wrote a few days ago that Democrats need to make Republicans take tough votes, and none would be tougher than a vote on a war tax. Republicans would either have to vote to increase taxes (you might not have heard this, but Republicans generally don’t like to raise taxes) or they would have to vote against funding for the troops. They would have to choose between their so-called ethos or their b.s., Hannityesque flag waving rhetoric.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That doesn’t sound bad at all, and I’m delighted to see Lieberman take some responsibility for finding the money to finance the reckless foreign policy decisions he endorses. Indeed, he told<\/a> his Senate Armed Services Committee colleagues last week that “we underfunding some needs we have. I think the Army needs more, the National Guard needs more. I think we’re heading rapidly to a 274-ship Navy, and we’re flat-funding research and development.” At the same time, he said, the new White House budget made it clear that “we’re really squeezing some critical domestic programs.”<\/p>\n

A “war tax,” in this context, makes sense. And Cliff’s right, it would put the GOP on the spot a bit, narrowing their choices to a) paying for their foreign policy and national security priorities; b) changing<\/i> their foreign policy and national security priorities; or c) keeping passing the bill to future generations.<\/p>\n

That said, there’s one thing that’s causing me to hesitate: wouldn’t a new revenue stream effectively encourage<\/i> the Bush-Cheney-McCain-Lieberman foreign policy decisions that have been so disastrous?
\n
\nAngry Bear’s item<\/a> from late last week sounded persuasive.<\/p>\n

The political activist in me says no way do I want to pay for this war. I was against it and the President lied to get us into it, all the while being cheered on by many who even today can’t admit they were wrong. Let them pay for it if they like it so much. Add to this the injustice of proposing a broad based tax to pay for the war just after massive tax cuts benefiting the richest among us. What that means at the end of the day is a massive shift in paying for the war — First make sure the rich get out from under and then stick it to everyone with a regressive tax.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, it’s obviously a serious problem that Bush, Cheney, and their congressional enablers don’t have the money to pay for their military ambitions. But my inclination is not to give them more money, but to get them to change their ambitions<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I applaud Lieberman’s instinct. He wants his wars and he wants to pay for them, which is more than we can say for his Republican allies. Now if we could only have a more sensible foreign policy, Lieberman’s war tax wouldn’t even be necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Lieberman, for all of his offensive Republican tendencies, still seems to have a little fiscally-responsible Democratic voice in his head, wondering how the country can afford to pay for Bush’s foreign policy. My friend Cliff Schecter noted today that Lieberman even went so far as to propose a solution that his new GOP buddies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}