••can ye pass the acid test?••

ye who enter here be afraid, but do what ye must -- to defeat your fear ye must defy it.

& defeat it ye must, for only then can we begin to realize liberty & justice for all.

time bomb tick tock? nervous tic talk? war on war?

or just a blog crying in the wilderness, trying to make sense of it all, terror-fried by hate radio and FOX, the number of whose name is 666??? (coincidence?)

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Three senior House Democrats are proposing a new tax to pay for the Iraq war, as well as vowing to oppose any funding bill for Iraq that does not include a policy for ending the conflict.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI), Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), chairman of the Defense subcommittee on House Appropriations, and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), will soon unveil a "surtax" on taxes owed by Americans to help cover the cost of the war, the trio announced this morning.

The tax is designed to raise $140 billion to $150 billion annually, and would range from a 2% surtax on low-income Americans to as much as 15% for wealthy taxpayers.

Obey and Murtha also said that they would not move an Iraq supplemental funding bill, needed to pay for combat operations in 2008, unless a "goal" of having all US combat troops out of the country by January 2009, troop deployment times are shortened, and President Bush demonstrates that will engage in "an intensive, broad scale diplomatic offensive involving other countries in the region."


Well, so much for that idea...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) apparently doesn't favor a surtax to pay for the war in Iraq that a trio of her prominent members unveiled Tuesday morning. Her distaste was enough that aides even posted her comment below rejecting the idea on her website Tuesday afternoon:

"During nearly five years of war in Iraq, the President has failed to learn the lesson that war should require shared sacrifice. He has asked for no sacrifice from the American people -- except from our men and women in uniform and their families -- while adding hundreds of billions of dollars in debt for future generations to repay.

"Some have suggested that shared sacrifice should take the form of a draft; others have suggested a surtax. Those who oppose a tax and the draft also should oppose the President's war. Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to a draft and I am opposed to a war surtax.

"The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment of our troops and the President’s plan for a 10-year war in Iraq. We must end this war."


WASHINGTON - The House takes up legislation today that would require President Bush to submit a plan for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The bill would require the administration to report to Congress on the status of redeployment plans in 60 days. Follow up reports would be required every 90 days thereafter.

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