Waiting for a war tax

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Looking back to the 2003 tax cut, Sen. Ben Cardin, R-Md., said, “That policy was wrong. You don’t cut taxes when you’re going to war.”

He added, “I think we need to pay for a significant part of these (Iraq and Afghanistan) costs. I don’t have a specific proposal as to whether it should be a tax increase.”

Cardin agreed that the 2011 expiry of the current income tax rates is looming over the tax debate.

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Need for 'courage' on tax increases
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said, “You have to have the courage to say to the American people, ‘We are sending our soldiers, would you please help me pay for this?’”

Dorgan said he would propose some “revenue raisers that ought to accompany” the $194 billion Iraq supplemental spending bill when it is debated, probably early next year.

Meanwhile GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is up for re-election next year, made it clear Tuesday that Republicans will run in 2008 on their opposition to tax increases.

He said that one lesson of last week’s election results was “the tax issue is back on the front burner in American politics going into 2008. The American people are speaking here again, and they are not interested in having tax increases.”

Republicans unified on anti-tax stance?
He cited as evidence the overwhelming defeat of a tobacco tax increase in Oregon and the defeat of the mayor of Indianapolis and the majority of the city council over a tax increase.

He also pointed to last week’s House vote to increase taxes on a form of income called “carried interest” which is earned by hedge fund and other investment managers. Not one House Republican voted for that measure and it’s expected to die in the Senate.

Opposition to increasing taxes, McConnell said, “unifies Republicans of all stripes.”

The debate during the next year he said will be “over just who wants to increase the tax burden on the American people.”

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Whether or not Republican leaders are correct in thinking that an anti-tax position is the key to their success in 2008 elections, congressional Democrats are now mostly biding their time on the issue of how to pay for the war.

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