Do you support this idea?
I would submit that if you do, you are not a true Tea Partier.
The impetus behind the first modern Tea Party in 2007, Ron Paul's campaign for a smaller, less intrusive, federal government, would have concerns about this plan to give tax breaks to veterans. Actual proponents of smaller government recognize that any USG intervention, even well intentioned intervention, skews the marketplace making life more difficult for all citizens. Ultimately original Tea Partiers would support the plan, as any sort of tax cut is better than no tax cut. Such cuts should be universal, but you take what you can get and publicly lament the lack of a wider program for the rest of the country.
Neocons, who have been embracing the Tea Party movement's name so passionately you would have thought their Lockheed Martin campaign donors had ordered them to, would applaud this idea without consideration of its fairness to other taxpayers though. Anything related to defense, veterans, and war, is blindly supported by the neocons (who increasingly label themselves as Tea Party members), although sometimes with minimal alacrity when announced by President Obama.
There is an argument to be made that our common law, Anglo-American system has always made an exception to principles of equity when it comes to veterans. Since feudal England programs ranging from pensions to affirmative action have been implemented to protect those who protect the state. In the spirit of this argument, Obama's plan imagines the most sizable credit for businesses which hire a combat wounded veteran- a noble idea.
But is it a Constitutional one?
Article I, Section 8 empowers the Congress to raise armies and to appropriate money for such armies (for no more than two years, which our modern Congress dances around nicely). But taxing tax dollars from one group and redistributing them to another to benefit veterans is not mentioned.
Far from the temporary, "called up when desperately needed" style of militia the Constitution imagined, today's military is a massive, self-licking ice cream cone which expands continuously to line the pockets of quasi-private interests and high-level government bureaucrats. To support the monster, the elites profiting on the enterprise have recruited and employ several million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
Hold on tight here neocons, you are going to detest the next paragraph.
Most folks in the military will never see real combat. They might deploy to a war zone, earning extra pay for the risk, but most members of the military will never experience the sort of "Band of Brothers," on the ground fighting that Americans like to imagine they are supporting when they buy a yellow ribbon.
To be sure, some of them are. There tens of thousands of, mostly men but some women, in the military who have engaged in combat operations of tremendous risk. Their performance should be applauded and appreciated.
But for every soldier who took fire in Basra there are a dozen administrative types in Kuwait shuffling paperwork (who are also collection benefits for being in a war zone). And for each of them there are a dozen more back in the States shuffling their paperwork. Many of them work in recruiting, usually from poorer neighborhoods where minorities and immigrants are desperate for an escape, more combat troops. But the number of actual fighting men and women is far lower than one would imagine.
Most objectionable about this proposal though is this:
Administration officials put the cost at $120 million over two years. The plan requires congressional approval and will be funded from the existing budget, the official said.
Oh, the plan requires congressional approval then, does it? So the president cannot just wave his "change" wand and order it so? It is disturbing how the executive has grown to the point that the president is just assumed to write laws and the congress can either vote them up or down. If we are slowly reversing the progress of 225 years of modern liberty, we have just reached the point when Louis XIV curtailed the power of the nobility. Next we will see Obama preventing priests from visiting Rome without his permission.
John Boehner's recent admonishmentto the president that the congress writes the laws and the president chooses to sign them or not, might just be his greatest legacy as Speaker. If that statement takes hold and resonates in Washington, the whole country would be better off. And if the rest of the Republican Party can determine just how loyal they are to the idea of smaller government, even in the face of promised tax credits for veterans, maybe then we will know if this Tea Party thing is contagious or just a convenient label.