Ezra, in his WAPO column proposes some "no brainers", proposed legislation that everyone should be able to agree on.
According to him, no-brainer #4 is the Franken-sponsored "Pay for War Act".
As Franken puts it, "war shouldn't add to the deficit".
Now, I'm guessing Al is opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (me too!!), but that is just a completely idiotic principle.
People, in WWII the deficit reached 25% of GDP. Good thing for us Al Franken wasn't in office then!
"Gee whiz Hirohito, we sure don't like what you're doing, but we've about maxed out this year's tax revenues and hey, war shouldn't add to the deficit, so......."
Look at this picture and then reflect on the fact that Al Franken is a US Senator (clic the pic for a more glorious image)!
WWI and WWII stick out like wagging fingers rebuking Senator Al (and his boy Ezra).
If the US is in a war that poses a serious threat, we need to be able to spend whatever it takes to win. That's just common sense, as Al likes to say.
Trying to hamstring the future defense of this country as a reaction to the current situation certainly is a no-brainer, just not in the way Ezra means the term.
4 comments:
More generally, in Coercion, Capital, and European States, Charles Tilly showed that access to credit markets was one of the determining factors in state formation during the early modern era. In other words, states that followed the Franken rule for a paygo military got defeated and absorbed by states that were willing to put a few guns on their credit cards. For instance, this is why there is still a country called the Netherlands but we no longer talk about the various duchies, kingdoms, etc that didn't have such good access to credit when the French or the Prussians came a-knocking.
This duchy was rockin'
till the Prussians came knockin'
Thanks for your excellent comment.
Ron Chernow made a similar point in his biography of Alexander Hamilton and argued that this was one of Hamilton's motivations to help establish a strong financial system in the US.
The WWII victory doesn't impress liberals in Minnesota.
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