EJ Dionne has a recent column praising Democratic talk of raising taxes to pay for the war:
If Friedman has stopped there his column would be quasi-tolerable -- but he continues:
His ranting about broadband is similarly bizarre, an OECD study ranks the U.S. 12th in the world in broadband penetration (which is more difficult in the U.S. owing to a dispersed population -- it's easier to roll out in countries with higher population densities). This places us ahead of France, Germany and the U.K. and hardly strikes me as a crisis. I also have no idea why it is the government's job to roll out broadband, and it's all the more puzzling given the failures associated with municipal wifi.
Friedman's mention of high speed rail is unsurprising as it seems to be a favorite of many of the left. My guess is that they visit Europe and see these futuristic shiny trains and wonder why we can't have the same thing here, forgetting the fact that passenger rail makes little sense in the U.S. outside of the Northeast, due to both the aforementioned lack of population density and the fact that in many cases it makes far more sense to take a plane given the vast distances between many U.S. cities. Given Amtrak's record with the Acela train I don't see any reason why that additional spending on high-speed rail would be anything other than a boondoggle.
Lastly, Friedman also claims the need to build schools. But why is this the role of the federal government? Can Friedman show any relationship between improved schools and increased federal spending? Of course, I don't find it any accident that where the government enjoys the least amount of responsibility, colleges and universities, the U.S. is far ahead of its European brethren.
Such details, however, appear to be lost on Friedman, who instead prefers to offer up simple formulations: the Bush Administration is dumb, foreigners are smart and more government spending is the answer.
Would conservatives and Republicans support the war in Iraq if they had to pay for it?Thomas Friedman seems to have received the same memo and pens a similar column today:
That is the immensely useful question that Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, put on the table this week by calling for a temporary war tax to cover President Bush's request for $145 billion in supplemental spending for Iraq.
The proposal is a magnificent way to test the seriousness of those who claim that the Iraq war is an essential part of the "global war on terror." If the war's backers believe in it so much, it should be easy for them to ask taxpayers to put up the money for such an important endeavor.
Every so often a quote comes out of the Bush administration that leaves you asking: Am I crazy or are they? I had one of those moments last week when Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, was asked about a proposal by some Congressional Democrats to levy a surtax to pay for the Iraq war, and she responded, “We’ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type, and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything.”You know what, I actually agree with them. I think that taxes should be tagged to specific expenditures. Frankly I think that they are being too modest, I think that every government spending program should have a specific tax attached to it. All the billions spent on agricultural subsidies -- have a tax for it. Social spending -- tax for that too. Perhaps we could have a specific tax attached to every government department -- defense, commerce, energy, education -- the whole lot. I'm serious. I am absolutely in favor of taxpayers knowing what their money is paying for to promote a cost-benefit analysis.
Yes, those silly Democrats. They’ll raise taxes for anything, even — get this — to pay for a war!
If Friedman has stopped there his column would be quasi-tolerable -- but he continues:
Friends, we are through the looking glass. It is now “fiscally irresponsible” to want to pay for a war with a tax. These democrats just don’t understand: the tooth fairy pays for wars. Of course she does — the tooth fairy leaves the money at the end of every month under Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s pillow. And what a big pillow it is! My God, what will the Democrats come up with next? Taxes to rebuild bridges or schools or high-speed rail or our lagging broadband networks? No, no, the tooth fairy covers all that. She borrows the money from China and leaves it under Paulson’s pillow.This is pure nonsense. As George Will notes, poor U.S. infrastructure isn't due to a lack of funding:
Of course, we can pay for the Iraq war without a tax increase. The question is, can we pay for it and be making the investments in infrastructure, science and education needed to propel our country into the 21st century? Visit Singapore, Japan, Korea, China or parts of Europe today and you’ll discover that the infrastructure in our country is not keeping pace with our peers’.
We can pay for anything today if we want to stop investing in tomorrow. The president has already slashed the National Institutes of Health research funding the past two years. His 2008 budget wants us to cut money for vocational training, infrastructure and many student aid programs.
You can no more embarrass a senator than you can a sofa, so the tears were not accompanied by blushing about having just passed a transportation bill whose 6,371 pork projects cost $24 billion, about 10 times more than the price of the levee New Orleans needed.I suppose some people might say that it's "only" $24 billion -- a sign of just how much government spending we've become accustomed to -- but that's enough to fund 60 bridges to nowhere (at $400 million a pop). Friedman's willingness to give Congress a pass and simply claim that we lack enough to spend ("invest" in Friedman-speak) is ridiculous. With Democrats it's always a lack of money, never poor government.
His ranting about broadband is similarly bizarre, an OECD study ranks the U.S. 12th in the world in broadband penetration (which is more difficult in the U.S. owing to a dispersed population -- it's easier to roll out in countries with higher population densities). This places us ahead of France, Germany and the U.K. and hardly strikes me as a crisis. I also have no idea why it is the government's job to roll out broadband, and it's all the more puzzling given the failures associated with municipal wifi.
Friedman's mention of high speed rail is unsurprising as it seems to be a favorite of many of the left. My guess is that they visit Europe and see these futuristic shiny trains and wonder why we can't have the same thing here, forgetting the fact that passenger rail makes little sense in the U.S. outside of the Northeast, due to both the aforementioned lack of population density and the fact that in many cases it makes far more sense to take a plane given the vast distances between many U.S. cities. Given Amtrak's record with the Acela train I don't see any reason why that additional spending on high-speed rail would be anything other than a boondoggle.
Lastly, Friedman also claims the need to build schools. But why is this the role of the federal government? Can Friedman show any relationship between improved schools and increased federal spending? Of course, I don't find it any accident that where the government enjoys the least amount of responsibility, colleges and universities, the U.S. is far ahead of its European brethren.
Such details, however, appear to be lost on Friedman, who instead prefers to offer up simple formulations: the Bush Administration is dumb, foreigners are smart and more government spending is the answer.
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