(CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he is “generally” supportive of a proposal to levy a “war surtax” on Americans to offset the cost of the Afghanistan war, a tax that would be set by the president himself.
 
Hoyer added that while he would not commit “at this point” to any specific proposal, he believed that the government must “pay for what we do.”
 
“As you know, I’m for paying for things that we do and I’ve generally been supportive of that proposition,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday at his weekly press briefing.
 
The number two House Democrat said that his only reservation was the impact such a tax might have on a struggling U.S. economy, saying that getting a war tax passed has been “complicated” by the country’s economic woes.
 
“I’m generally in favor of paying for what we do,” Hoyer repeated. “Because of the economic crisis that confronts us, that effort is complicated, by the economic crisis.”
 
According to the Congressional Research Service, the war in Afghanistan costs $3.6 billion a month, or a little over $43 billion a year.
 
Hoyer also said he would have to talk to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) about any war surtax and how it would be structured. But Hoyer stated for the third time that he supported the idea of raising new taxes on Americans to pay for the war in Afghanistan.
 
“I’m going to talk to Obey about it,” said Hoyer. “I’m not supporting it at this point in time, but I do support his general proposition, but I’m not supporting the tax at this point in time. Again, it’s complicated by the necessity, on the one hand, to get the economy going again and, on the other hand, to pay for what we buy.”
 
The war surtax is Obey’s idea and is intended to prevent the cost of the Afghanistan war from derailing Democrats’ plans for expanding government and economic reforms.
 
“If we don’t address the cost of this war, we will continue shoving billions of dollars in taxes off on future generations and will devour money that could be used to rebuild our economy by fixing our broken health care system, expanding educational opportunities and job training possibilities, attacking our long-term energy problems and building stronger communities,” Obey said in a Nov. 19 statement announcing the bill.
 
“We cannot allow the war to derail that potential.”
 
The legislative bill, known as the “Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010,” would allow President Obama, starting in 2011, to set the level of the surtax on individuals and corporations each year as high as needed to pay for the previous year’s war costs.
 
“The applicable percentage determined by the President with respect to any calendar year shall be the percentage which the President estimates will result in revenues to the Treasury under this section for taxable years beginning in such calendar year which are equal to the Federal expenditures related to the war in Afghanistan during the fiscal year ending in the preceding calendar year,” the bill reads.
 
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who recently returned from Afghanistan, called the plan “cynical,” saying that fighting al Qaeda should be more of a priority for Congress than health reform or other domestic programs.
 
“I think that's as cynical as it is irresponsible,” Price told CNN on Nov. 30. “The fact of the matter is the protection of the American people is the number one challenge, the number one task for the United States Congress. It ought to be a priority in our budgeting process.”
 
“There's all sorts of money that has been ill-spent to date,” he said. “I would propose to the president that he begin to decrease spending in non-defense areas, non-defense discretionary areas in Washington where you can save significant amounts of money.
 
“A penny on the dollar will get us hundreds of billions of dollars in order to accomplish the priorities that we ought to have for the American people. And one of the priorities absolutely has to be and must be the protection of our land and degrading the resources that al Qaeda has,” Price added.
 
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) told The Telegraph (in Macon, Ga.) on Tuesday, “It will be a very interesting argument and difficult for me to understand how a Democrat can stand up with a straight face and say, ‘OK, we’re going to spend two and a half trillion dollars on a health care bill, but we’re not willing to protect the American people.’”