War Taxes and the Cost of Militarism
By Colman McCarthy
America’s military functions year round but April is when citizens supply the cash. Collectively, the nation’s estimated 130 million citizens who file federal income taxes are supporting a record war budget, one that has risen 60 percent since 2001.
Mathematicians at the Center for Defense Information, a group with a necessarily high-powered adding machine, don’t stop at the proposed 2008 Pentagon budget of $481 billion. Add in the hundred billions for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administgration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Coast guard, the anti-terrorism budget, military aid to allies and friendly dictators, pensions, past war debts, and the tab tops off at $878 billion.
The sum is beyond grasping. If rounded out to $900 billion--you think there will be no overruns?--the spending comes to $2,465,753,425 per day, $102,739, 726 per hour, $1,712,329 per minute and $28,539 per second.
$28,539. $28,539. $28,539. $28,539. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Tick tock.
Arithmetically, that’s the easy part. The sums are precise. What’s imprecise is exactly how much each tax filer pays in actual dollars that go for military and security programs. With the War Resistance League estimating that half of all federal discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon, a safe conclusion is that militarism is expensive.
Because a progressive tax is at work, those in higher income brackets may pay a larger percentage for war. But that can be offset by more deductions, which is where accountants come in. Plus the Bush tax cuts which favor the rich.
According to Joshua Goldstein in “The Real Price of War” (New York University Press, 2004), income taxes pay for only about half of the war budget. The rest is borrowed. Goldstein estimates that a household with an income between $50,000 and $100,000 pays $500 a month for war, $6,000 a year—or $36,000 since 2000.
Goldstein brings the numbers home, literally: “To see what the U.S. government’s war-related spending costs your household, let’s install a parking meter in your living room. Put a quarter in the meter and you get 20 minutes of security….Six quarters gets you two hours. Keep feeding the meter around the clock, 24/7, year round….The quarters add up to about $500 a month.”
Polls report that the U.S. public has turned against the Iraq war. That resistance is meaningless up against the IRS tax code that assures a steady flow of money for war. Except for those who have no taxable income and those the IRS can’t find, the only ones who aren’t paying are the conscientious war tax resisters. They are willing to pay their full share of taxes for social programs but not ones for killing. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (nwtrcc.org or hunguponwar.org) believes that some 10,000 citizens are in that group.
The courts rarely give relief to conscientious tax resisters. Which is consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Nowhere is the word conscience found. If it were, federal courts would be sympathetic to pacifists who refuse to pony up.
With America’s war on terror holding out promise of being a war without end, and with military contractors reporting record profits--Lockheed Martin soared 47 percent the third quarter of last year—Henry David Thoreau, as usual, had it right: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill this year, that would not be as violent and bloody a measure as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
Anti-war demonstrations, lobbying for a Department of Peace, denouncing the Bush-Cheney regime, peace bumper stickers, donating to Code Pink, calls for withdrawing the troops: it all brings on fine feelings of satisfaction. But it’s no match for the satisfaction of the IRS tax collectors when the checks roll in every April and the money is disbursed by Congress to the military.
Those conscientious tax resisters again. The least we can do is say yes to those who say no.