Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Should hawks support Obama on taxes? A rightist raptor responds

Here is a response from AEI’s Tom Donnelly to my calling him out yesterday: By Tom Donnelly Best Defense guest defendant I won’t presume to respond for AEI as a whole, but I don’t see why providing for the common defense correlates to tax rates on the rich or to the percentage of GDP owned ...

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

Here is a response from AEI's Tom Donnelly to my calling him out yesterday:

Here is a response from AEI’s Tom Donnelly to my calling him out yesterday:

By Tom Donnelly
Best Defense guest defendant

I won’t presume to respond for AEI as a whole, but I don’t see why providing for the common defense correlates to tax rates on the rich or to the percentage of GDP owned by the top 1 percent of earners. We have to weaken our military until the rich pay their “fair share,” whatever that is? What about corporations who pay little or no tax? Do we have to cut defense spending until General Electric pays its fair share? What about lower-income Americans who pay no income taxes at all? What about the subsidies and distortions in the tax code? If defense spending is the hammer for every political occasion, why don’t we make cuts commensurate with the tax revenues lost, for example, subsidizing second-home-in-Maine mortgages?

Personally, I would be happy to see some rise in federal tax revenues in trade for a long-term solution to the problem of runaway entitlement costs — costs that are already triple the core defense budget but rising, thanks to Baby Boomer retirements, rapidly and inexorably. That would at least link the government’s income to its largest expenditure.

But even if we can’t resolve the political impasse over how to get our fiscal house in order and have to keep borrowing, I’d prefer to be investing in an adequate defense, the ultimate common good. Even people at AEI would rather be safe than rich.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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