Editorial: That’ll be $600 billion

Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Coming first to mind when thinking of President Bush's tragically false pronouncements while he was whipping up support for his war are these: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and plans to use them; Iraq collaborated with the 9/11 terrorists.

But there was at least one other statement comparable with those two in terms of its falsity. Bush administration budget officials estimated that the total financial cost of the war would be in the $60 billion range.

As the country knows now, of course, a zero would have to be added to that estimate to achieve a much more accurate figure - for just the cost so far.

His gross mischaracterization of the war's cost has not really emerged as an issue because no one is yet paying. Instead of doing the right thing - asking this generation of Americans to pay the war's bills - Bush is simply letting them pile up.

To do otherwise would be to ask the country at large, not just the troops and their families, to share in the sacrifice. Had Bush been forthright about war and its costs, he would have needed to seek tax increases, not tax breaks. And Bush has never wanted to do that ... something about elections.

We can't help but wonder if Bush's support for the war would have collapsed long ago if a fair-sounding plan put forth by three House Democrats last week had been in place all along.

Rather than dumping the costs of the war onto our grandchildren, Reps. David Obey of Wisconsin, John Murtha of Pennsylvania and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts suggested paying for the war ourselves, right now.

They proposed tacking an Iraq war surcharge onto federal income taxes. Tax bills for low- and middle-income Americans would increase by 2 percent, and wealthier Americans would see increases of between 12 percent and 15 percent.

We understand that, politically, the proposal will go nowhere.

But if the proposal were adopted, it would be interesting to see how many current war supporters would become critics once some sacrifice came their way.