More Taxes=Better Paid Troops? No.

CNN has as its poll question: Would you be willing to pay additional taxes to better pay US troops?

At first glance, it's a straightforward question and some might be surprised to see that the results are pretty much split down the middle between yea and nay.

Here's the background issue, however. The Pentagon receives an unprecedented amount of every tax dollar paid. However, the Pentagon uses it badly. Between overpaid contracts, flying its top people around first class (people like Richard Perle, who I'd rather see have to walk, thank you very much), spending outrageous sums for projects they know won't fly, and a lot of secret stuff that Donald Rumsfeld will never divulge to us, the one thing they never budget for is sufficient funds to pay the troops. Hell, they don't even get the troops home to their own doorstep after they've fulfilled their military service obligations.

There is no need to raise taxes to pay our soldiers a living wage for the kind of dangerous work they do. Mr. Rumsfeld doesn't subsist on a tiny little income. They shouldn't either. But the problem isn't that the Pentagon doesn't get enough money (far too much in comparison with all other areas, if you ask me). It's that they think of the troops as the least important component, and pay them accordingly.

So here's my take. Sure, I would be willing to pay additional tax dollars to more appropriately pay our troops, but only AFTER the Pentagon becomes far more responsible for the money they're given. Force Rumsfeld and all the people who come after them to give the troops a BIG pay raise (we pay them abysmally now), and then pay for all their other shit. The troops get paid first, all the perks for the Secretary of DoD and all the nice extras come after. Don't just give the DoD a blank check and let them decide how to spend it. They've proven time and again not to be trustworthy in this regard.