Dave Obey

With Barack Obama planning to announce an increase of 34,000 troops to Afghanistan tonight, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus reports on Wisconsin Democrat Dave Obey’s proposal for a war surtax. The House appropriations chairman is proposing a one percent surtax for those who make over $150,000-a-year and says this will pay for the escalation in Afghanistan. The clarity of his argument is undeniable: Congress, the media and even the Obama administration have spent the last ten months going out of their way to make sure a health care reform bill doesn’t ratchet up the deficit. Why shouldn’t fears about the deficit factor in to debate about the Afghanistan War?

A problem, however, is that Obey (and most of the Democratic leaders who have signed on to the Obey proposal) actually oppose the war. Obey wants to make the point that this is an optional war: even if the U.S. should wage it, it’s not so important that costs should not even be considered. Does it follow then that if Obey found the war was absolutely necessary he would mention the cost? To give a silly example, if Canadians invaded Wisconsin and seized the capitol building in Madison would Obey call for a surtax to be enacted before the U.S. retaliated?

What Obey is doing is meant to be politically clever. And it is to the extent that he shows the double standard in concerns about deficit spending. But Obey and his House allies have put themselves in a position where they can’t engage people who think, however incorrectly, that the Taliban pose a mortal threat. I mean if Obey doesn’t trust Afghanistan to have a functional central government but still supports the war as long as it’s taxed, he’s bringing the worst of tax-and-spend liberalism to foreign policy. Considering that even Obey thinks the surtax might not be pass, it might send a more clear and powerful message to simply oppose the war.

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