Our personal moral and professional choices should not be the business of the Internal Revenue Service.
With twenty-four Democrats running for president, it can be hard to get attention these days—just ask Beto O'Rourke. Touted by many just months ago as the face of a new Democratic Party, Beto is currently mired in the low single digits in polls, typically running fifth or sixth or seventh in a crowded field.
One obvious problem with a designated tax—any designated tax—is that there is no guarantee that the revenue generated will match the need. If one of Beto's VHCTFs brings in less money than is needed to pay for the health care of the veterans of that war, those veterans will suffer. If each VHCTF brings in more than is needed, the priorities of the federal budget will be thrown out of whack.
So while the War Tax is intended to impose consequences for supporting a war, it would be imposed on those who opposed that war as well as those who supported it. You may speak against the war, write letters to the editor, vote for antiwar candidates, march in opposition, chain yourself to the White House fence—but you still have to pay the tax. Everybody has to pay the tax.
Different people will answer those questions in different ways. But that fact illuminates the problem—that even to ask those questions, in this context, is to concede something that must not be conceded.
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