Hunting The Muse

Peace Tax

I've seen this proposal floating around (I guess it happens every year) where a group of people tries to get Congress to pass a Peace Tax proposal, meaning a fund where people's tax payments can go to, knowing that that particular fund would not be directed toward the military at all in the government's budget.

It seems kind of silly to me. It's not like we have two governments, the military government and the government-of-the-rest-of-the-stuff. It all gets mixed together. If it ends up that 30% of our federal budget is for the military, and there's this chunk of revenue that is not for the military, then they'd just up the percentage of the rest of the contributors to make it add up to 30%.

They've probably thought all that through, but I honestly don't see how such a measure could have teeth. If it gets passed so that if there isn't enough money left over, then the budget committee would actually have to curtail its military spending, then Congress would probably just vote some emergency something or other to get around it.

Seems like a waste of time to me.

Posted by Curt at April 15, 2003 07:41 PM