Instapundit reports that Robert Francis ("Call me Beto") O'Rourke is channeling Robert Heinlein and proposing a tax on households that lack current or past armed service members. The idea has a superficial appeal: fund veterans' benefits by putting an extra tax on the population that benefits from military service without personal sacrifice. On second thought, though, isn't it just another way of saying vets should get taxpayer-funded benefits, with the new wrinkle that vets and their famlies should get a tax break, too? Why not just fund vet benefits at a suitable level and, while we're at it, quit playing games that make the benefits unreasonably hard to get?
O'Rourke's proposal smuggles in the assumption that we can't treat vets properly unless we raise taxes. As usual, his mind goes straight to a tax that lands on some but not others, because that's the only way to achieve social justice. Someone always needs to pay reparations to someone else.
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