Whether you’re borrowing from China or from Americans, you’re, um, still BORROWING. War bonds are just bonds, borrowed funds that have to be paid back with interest. The point of a war tax is to finance an escalation up front, instead of paying more in the long run and hiding the true cost.

A war surtax would really give Republicans trouble, in addition to being the right policy, to show the real cost of war, instead of living in this fantasy world where our actions abroad have no effect on our actions at home. But Democratic threats have been proven to be so idle over the years that nobody accords them a smidgen of respect. And thus we have a failure to govern.

I see very little evidence to support the assertion that the war surtax is “unlikely to pass.” It looks rather like a prerequisite for escalating the war in Congress.