By Emelie Rutherford
Republicans slammed legislation unveiled last week that would hike taxes to pay for the war in Afghanistan, a House Democratic proposal observers on both sides of the aisle predicted would not go far.
The Share the Sacrifice Act of 2001–announced last Thursday night by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.), John Murtha (D-Pa.), and John Larson (D-Conn.)–would impose a surtax starting in 2011 to fully pay the previous year’s war cost, with some exceptions and caveats.
Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee, has talked about such a tax proposal and acknowledged he mainly wants to spur debate about the impact of borrowing to pay for the war and doesn’t necessarily foresee such legislation passing.
Obey, chairman of the full House Appropriations Committee (HAC), in a joint statement with Murtha and Larson noted talk in Washington about paying $1 trillion over the next decade for health care reform.
“Now…President (Barack Obama) is being asked to consider an enlarged counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, which proponents tell us will take at least a decade and would also cost about a trillion dollars,” they said. “But, unlike the healthcare bill, that would not be paid for. We believe that’s wrong. Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for.”
The legislation has a total of 11 original co-sponsors, including such liberal allies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calf.) as House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Larson is the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) spokesman Michael Steel panned the tax legislation, saying this country “needs real fiscal discipline, not tax hike schemes in the midst of a recession.”
“Providing for the needs of our troops fighting overseas isn’t the reason our nation faces a sea of red ink,” Steel said, pointing to Democrats’ support for the economic- stimulus act and health care reform.
HAC Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) said in a statement while there “should be no higher priority” than national security, Americans already are “being taxed to death.”
Lewis slammed Democratic leaders and Obey for substantial increases in non-defense spending and said “it’s time for them to understand that we don’t need yet another job- killing tax, we need to better prioritize the resources we have.”
House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) decried the tax bill as “little more than a hollow attempt to try to turn citizens against our troops’ critical mission in Afghanistan.”
“It seems inconsistent to me that Congressional Democrats would levy a tax on the American people in order to support our troops in harm’s way when, at the same time, they have advocated for spending trillions of dollars on their social priorities,” McKeon said in a statement.
Some congressional aides on both sides of the aisle predicted the tax bill would not move far in the legislative process.
Obey, Murtha, and Larson in their statement argue the “only people who’ve paid any price for our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are our military families,” which is a common theme of Murtha’s.
They said “if this war is to be fought, it’s only fair that everyone share the burden” and the nation stop borrowing to fund it.
If Afghanistan war costs aren’t addressed, they argued, reform efforts in areas such as health care, education, and job training will suffer.
The bill would require the president set a surtax that fully pays the previous year’s war cost, yet would allow a one-year implementation delay if the president deems the economy too weak to weather such a tax change. The legislation would exempt members of the military who served in combat since Sept. 11, 2001, their relatives, and families of troops killed in combat, according to the statement.
Murtha recently told reporters he is worried about the economic impact of current deficit spending and is working with the Congressional Research Service to figure out how much of the inflation during the 1980s was spurred by spending the previous decade on the Vietnam War.
“We’ve got to start thinking of paying for this stuff,” Murtha said Nov. 5. “We just can’t keep (passing war-funding) supplementals and passing bills that aren’t paid for.” (Defense Daily, Nov. 9)