Say There, Brother,
Can You Spare a Mil?

Posted 12 a.m., May 2, 2004

by Kevin Featherly

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I'm writing late tonight to endorse Matt Miller's "Adopt a Reservist" plan.

The idea stems from numbers the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Tax Policy Center have released, which show just how much folks are getting from the Bush tax cuts.

Here's the tally: Americans earning more than $1 million a year will receive tax cuts on average of $123,000. Meanwhile, middle-wage earners--like those reservists in Iraq who are now being forced to stay an extra year or so while their jobs back home become threatened or their businesses fold--will get $647.

Many reservists, folks who signed on for six- or 12-month hitches to aid the nation in a time of crisis, now are facing the dilemma of not being able to return home when they thought they would, at a time when many of their families are rapidly descending into impoverishment.

Meanwhile, the government not only is refusing to raise taxes to pay for the war effort, it is in fact engaged in a huge giveback to the wealthy, even as we fight. The New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman said recently he has not uncovered another instance, in the history of civilization, when a similar wartime fiscal policy has ever been pursued.

So I'm all for Miller's "Adopt a Reservist" idea, which, in a nutshell, goes like this:

"America's 257,000 millionaires could give up some or all of their $30 billion in tax cuts this year to help ease the economic plight facing countless reservists and their families."

-- Matt Miller

Sounds perfect. After all, during the Civil War, rich folks paid good money to hire poor folks so they could avoid the draft and be replaced on the front lines. In a way, this is the same idea.

As Miller points out, the Adopt-a-Reservist plan thus reestablishes a form of 19th Century civic morality. That alone should lend it teriffic appeal to conservatives.

• Go to Matt Miller Online to read one of the greatest opinion writers working today.

• I also heartily recommend his book, The 2% Solution.

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