Linda Bilmes

And this is separate from the relatively small portion of the defense budget, which is so-called secret.

I think it's because it's a very far-flung, complex organization.

The Army, the Navy, the Air Force have different mechanisms.

They have different units that account for things in different ways, and they have not been able to reconcile them.

So there are certainly portions of the Pentagon that can account for their assets, but there are others that can't, and they can't reconcile how they do it.

Well, I think it's important to look at the historical context of this because in U.S.

history, we always paid for wars through a combination of tax increases and non-war budget cuts.

So from the War of 1812 through the Civil War, through the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, this issue of how we were going to pay for the war

was a very big issue for presidents and congresses in which they spent a lot of time thinking about how they could raise the money for the wars and whether it was worth it.

And certainly if you go to the archives, for example, the Johnson archives, you see him talking at length with all of his advisors about how he could retain support for his domestic programs at the same time that he was paying for

expletive deleted this effing war.

Right.

It used to have to come from somewhere, and taxes were raised a lot.

And President Wilson in World War I raised corporate taxes from 1% to 12%.

Wow.

President Truman raised top marginal tax rates to 92%.

President Johnson imposed a tax surcharge to 75% top rates.

So they really raised taxes to try and offset the cost of these wars.

Now, one of the consequences of that is that Congress had to get involved

because Congress has to approve tax increases.