House Appropriations chief David Obey, in an interview with ABC news, threw down the gauntlet on Afghanistan, saying if the administration wants more troops, he will demand that they be paid for with an across-the-board income tax surcharge.
He said the ten-year cost of the war clocks in at $900 billion, about the size of the Democratic health care legislation. Obey warned last spring when he pushed through the last war funding bill that the administration had one year to show progress. Time is up. House Democrats are now in a full-scale rebellion.
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Obey said unless the war is paid for it will "wipe out every initiative that we have to rebuild our own economy."
It will be interesting to see how Republicans who are fighting the health care legislation will feel about a war surtax; if they oppose it and do not find $900 billion in programs they want to cut, the only alternative is deficit financing, which is no longer an alternative. With a $1.4 trillion deficit this year, the Bush days of unfunded Medicare prescription drug bills and troop surges are over. Republicans, Democrats and the administration are going to have a very hard time getting used to that.
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