Letter: Consider war bonds to pay for military

An open letter to Washington’s legislative delegation.

We are learning from TV media that the current budget vision from the White House is to increase federal defense spending by $54 billion (10 percent), to “rebuild our depleted military,” and to be paid for by cutting domestic discretionary spending by an equal amount.

But it seems to me that if our military is so depleted, or especially if we face some existential threat such as imminent war, another approach which could raise funds much more quickly, and which would be much less disruptive to domestic government functions, would be simply to sell war bonds. War bonds helped the USA to win both World War I and World War II, and should have been sold after 9/11.

If war bonds were offered to counter an existential threat of war, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the public would eagerly buy them out of patriotism. But if raising the military budget is a ploy for downsizing inconvenient domestic programs out of ideology, I’d bet there would be much less enthusiasm for that kind of budget among the voting public.

Has the war bond option even been considered by the current administration?

This story was originally published March 8, 2017 at 4:29 AM with the headline "Letter: Consider war bonds to pay for military."