1115.org

For years, Democrats have complained about how George Bush and his band of merry men put two wars on the national charge card. About how, far from raising taxes or cutting non-military spending to cover the cost of his wars, Bush actually cut taxes and introduced a massive new domestic spending program, Medicare Part D.

Despite all the criticism, the Obama administration has just continued that practice, with very little discussion or debate. Now that Obama is about to send additional troops into Afghanistan — at an annual cost of about $34 billion if he sends 34,000 troops — talk has turned to whether Obama will try to make any attempt to cover this additional cost.

Strangely enough, it seems to be taken as a given, and accepted quite cheerfully too, that Obama will (and should) just continue to put the existing costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on the national charge card, just like Bush had done.

Here’s a brief survey of headlines:
Politico: Who will pick up tab for surge?
New York Post: Afghan surge will need war tax: pols
Detroit Free Press: THE WAR: How to pay for those extra troops we may send to Afghanistan?

And here’s a recent article by Bruce Bartlett in Forbes:

According to the (Congressional Research Service), the marginal cost of continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is about $11 billion per month, with no end in sight. Although there has been some decline in spending for the Iraq war, it has been more than offset by the rising cost of the war in Afghanistan. According to OMB director Peter Orszag, it costs about $1 million per year per soldier in the field, so adding 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, as President Obama is expected to do next week, will cost another $30 billion per year.

The White House has given no indication of how it plans to pay for expanding the war in Afghanistan (emphasis mine).

It doesn’t even occur to him to ask how the White House plans to pay for the existing cost of about $130 billion a year.

The closest thing we have to legislation that seeks to finance the cost of our wars is Representative David Obey’s bill that “would establish a 1% surtax on everyone’s federal income tax liability plus an additional percentage on those with a liability over $22,600 (for couples filing jointly), such that revenue from the surtax would pay for the additional cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan.” But, one, this bill addresses only the additional costs of the Afghanistan war. And, two, there is no serious backing for the proposal, or even any serious intent. The purpose is just to force Republicans into a politically embarrassing vote. After fulminating in unison at the size of what they are pleased to call Obama’s deficit, they now have the choice of voting to raise taxes or explaining why wars are magically exempt from their own vociferous criticism that we have to stop selfishly crippling our children and grandchildren with a mountainous burden of debt.

And here’s one of our senior Democratic senators, explaining why we shouldn’t be seriously concerned at this point about funding even the additional costs of the Afghanistan war:

Levin seemed to back off his earlier support for a war surtax to fund the escalation. While saying he still favored the tax on the rich, Levin acknowledged it probably wouldn’t happen.

“In the middle of a recession we’re probably not going to be able to increase taxes to pay for it,” he said.

“That should have happened some time ago,” he said of the surtax.

So that’s our excuse? “Hey, we plead recession.” And there’s also that neat little trick to admire: “It’s Bush’s fault, anyway!” (Even though what’s under discussion is the cost of the additional troops Obama is proposing to send to Afghanistan now. Bush, who never raised taxes to pay for his wars, should be blamed for also not slapping on a surtax to pay for later increases in the cost of his wars?)

Once upon a time — in the time of Bush, actually — the bitter acronym IOKIYAR resounded in liberal blogs throughout the land. (It’s OK if you’re a Republican.)

So have we now arrived (via the ironic full circle that brings us back to where we started and never expected to end up) at IOKIDDIT? (It’s OK if Democrats do it too.)

(If you think about it hard, squinting your mental eyes just so, you’ll realize that an outcome very different from what was widely expected can be reasonably represented as change, even if it is exactly the same as what went before.)