The first bracket, which covers joint returns with a liability of up to $22,600, roughly corresponds with households earning up to $150,000. In this case a 1 percent surtax is levied so the maximum additional cost would be $226.

The second bracket applied to tax liability between $22,600 and $36,400 or roughly equivalent to joint returns for couples earning between $150,000 to $250,000, The third bracket applies to those earning over $250,000 with a tax liability of $36,400 or higher.

The rates in the second and third brackets would vary depending on how much needs to be raised to cover the prior year’s war expenditures. But as a rule, the added surtax above $250,000 would be twice the percentage added onto taxes incurred between $150,000 and $250,000.

So, basically, upper-middle-class families and more would be asked to pay for the war. Yglesias comments that it’s a “clear signal” from the House Democratic leadership that any “backbencher who feels like jumping on this bandwagon is safe to do so.”

What will the Republicans say? A new loyalty oath for GOP elected officials and candidates demands support for “military-recommended troop surges” but also for, of course, lower taxes, the catechism of the conservative movement. Which GOP impulse will prove to be stronger?

In an interview with Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin, the chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee says:

“In Vietnam it took 500,000 troops and that didn’t solve the problem. So we have to take a different approach,” Murtha told The Cable in an exclusive interview. “I think that’s what McChrystal is trying to do,” he said, referring to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, who recently delivered a status report to the White House on the situation there.

Rogin correctly notes that Murtha’s 2005 opposition to the Iraq war, coming as it did from a consistent hawk, encouraged congressional Democrats to grow full-throated in their own criticism of the war. But now Murtha’s embroiled in massive ethical scandals. Congressional Democrats are balking at a second troop increase this year for their own reasons, and have leaders like Levin, House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and others expressing discomfort. Murtha probably won’t have the galvanizing effect on the Afghanistan debate that he did on the Iraq one.

The pending 2010 budget legislation for the first time requests more money for Afghanistan-Pakistan operations than for Operation Iraqi Freedom — $68 billion compared with $61 billion. Administration officials said they expected congressional debate on the larger Defense Department appropriation of more than half a trillion dollars to focus on Afghanistan spending.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee who spent the weekend in Afghanistan with Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), told the Providence Journal last week that he anticipated “a very vigorous debate” over the way forward. Reed, the Rhode Island paper reported, said he thinks that U.S. strategy is on the right track but that there is an urgent need for more Afghan forces.

That’s on top of the upcoming delivery to Congress of the administration’s metrics for measuring Afghanistan success. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has already called for a “flexible timetable” for withdrawal. But Feingold, for better or worse, still isn’t someone his Democratic colleagues look to for national security questions. Levin, however, is. So watch what Levin says now that he’s back from Afghanistan, which I believe is his first trip there since Gen. Stanley McChrystal took command, especially since it comes right on the heels of the Kunduz bombing disaster. Levin has been a consistent supporter of the administration on Afghanistan, a war whose value he frequently contrasted with his criticisms of the Iraq war, and delivered McChrystal a quiet, controversy-free confirmation hearing. Levin’s continued support — or lack thereof — will be a bellwether to his Democratic colleagues, who look to him for national security stewardship. Same goes, to a slightly lesser degree, for Reed.

In the House, the business is in the House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) has no share of ethical problems. He also has the chairmanship of the defense appropriations subcommittee. Last December, he publicly emphasized the need for an “achievable” Afghanistan strategy, a measurement at the heart of the Afghanistan debate. Murtha, a consistent hawk, denounced the Iraq war in 2005, giving Democratic colleagues and the bigfoot journalists who respect Murtha greater cover to move leftward on Iraq. His relentless ethics problems — he looks like he’s sold his office, basically — probably prevent anyone from saluting any flag Murtha raises on Afghanistan, but he still has management over the billions of dollars the administration wants for the war.

If Murtha wasn’t enough, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), the appropriations committee chairman, has told the administration it has what’s now less than a year to demonstrate progress in Afghanistan or come springtime, he’s going to start cutting war funding. That was before McChrystal was in place but after Obama announced his new strategy. And more than anything else, that has influence over the metrics, since it creates an incentive for the administration to juke the stats and create tests that it can pass in order to avoid Obey’s threatened cuts. On Sept. 24, the metrics are due to Congress, so we’ll get a clue then whether that’s how the administration is treating this first fall test.

Gates went on the attack against Pentagon “business as usual” yesterday:

“If we can’t get this right, what on earth can we get right?” Mr. Gates said in an acerbic, sometimes withering speech to the Economic Club of Chicago. “It is time to draw the line on doing defense business as usual.” From his point of view, that means overbuying weapons for wars the nation is unlikely to fight.

Parts of the plane are built in more 40 states, so it’s no surprise that even progressive senators from Massachusetts like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry don’t want to close the production line during a massive recession. What’s noteworthy is that Lockheed Martin, the principal F-22 manufacturer, doesn’t appear to be fighting the cut so hard. Lockheed also has a huge piece of the Joint Strike Fighter, Gates’ preferred replacement (to oversimplify things a bit) for the F-22, so it makes money either way. More Gates:

[T]he F-22, designed for cold-war aerial combat, has become the poster plane for each side. Mr. Gates argued to the economic club that it was a “niche, silver-bullet solution” for only a few potential situations, specifically “the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet,” and that the cheaper F-35, which is to start production in 2012, is a more versatile fighter. The F-22’s supporters say it not only provides jobs but also ensures American dominance of the skies.

Anyway: the vote on the F-22 is expected to come soon.

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A Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two “handlers” close to Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) as it collected nearly $250 million in federal funding through the lawmaker, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and sources familiar with the funding requests. The center then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha’s campaign supporters.

The cut-out in question appears to be a lobbying firm called PMA, which is under federal investigation. PMA’s clients got $299 million in defense earmarks in last year’s budget, and by pure coincidence, they and the firm routed $775,000 to Murtha for his reelection campaign last year. Funny how that works.

We oppose military escalation in Afghanistan and support non-military solutions to the conflict.

This was probably inevitable, for two reasons.

First, the actual strategy employed in Afghanistan is rather murky — as Gen. Petraeus’ remarks to the U.S. Institute of Peace on Thursday indicate — and, pending some strategy review from the Obama administration and U.S. Central Command, it’s by no means clear why sending additional troops stands a greater chance of yielding success. For that matter: what is success in Afghanistan? The fact that there isn’t an obvious answer is a sure indication of policy drift. This is something that isn’t just a matter of concern for bloggers. Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.) has been warning about the dangers of a military-only escalation, as has Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.).

Second, for at least four years, there’s been something of a dodge taken by liberals when discussing Afghanistan. To speak broadly, liberals have endlessly invoked the mantra that the real center of the war on terrorism is in Afghanistan, rather than in Iraq. But that’s been a statement about Iraq, rather than Afghanistan. To put it a different way, liberals, I think it’s fair to say, have discussed Afghanistan not on its own terms, but as a cudgel against the Iraq war. That’s by no means monolithic. A bunch of progressives — the Democracy Arsenal crew, Matt Yglesias, I daresay myself — have written about Afghanistan (TWI sent me there last year) from that perspective of first-order-national security importance. But lots of us have been content to take the safe position of rallying to the more-popular cause of the Afghanistan war as a way of insulating ourselves to charges of excessive dovishness for opposing the Iraq war. Well, as he’s said all along, Barack Obama will be calling that bluff.

But here’s the other thing. It’s only the first day of GetAfghanistanRight, but there’s nothing persuasive up on the site right now indicating what getting Afghanistan right means. Does the blog favor, say, supporting Hamid Karzai’s efforts to negotiate some kind of peace deal with insurgent groups? It doesn’t say. (If so, how does it overcome some of the difficulties inherent in that approach?) Should the U.S. be scaling up its aid assistance to the Afghan people or scaling it back, so as not to “sink deeper into the Afghan quagmire,” as one of the blog’s affiliated posts puts it? More fundamentally, what sort of Afghanistan is and isn’t in the U.S. interest; what strategy makes sense to support that goal; and what are acceptable costs? Just because the architects of the war haven’t presented such a vision doesn’t mean that critics of it shouldn’t present their own. As it stands right now, the blog presents links that support the proposition that things are bad in Afghanistan. But that statement itself doesn’t imply anything about future policy: everyone agrees that things are bad in Afghanistan. And that’s why some of them, myself included, favor a troop increase.

For instance, this is the way GetAfghanistanRight frames its argument:

“With the economy continuing a severe decline and the international scene in turmoil, we absolutely cannot afford a hugely expensive troop increase in Afghanistan. The country desperately needs many of the reforms and programs proposed by the incoming Obama administration. But, an escalation in Afghanistan will cripple our ability to mitigate the effects of the recession while making that country less stable. The success of the President-elect’s broader agenda depends on his ability to get us out of President Bush’s wars,” Robert Greenwald said.

That’s a statement about American priorities, but it’s not a statement about the war in Afghanistan. Does it mean that the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan? Does it mean that the U.S. should simply not add troops to Afghanistan? Does it mean that the U.S. should change strategy — and if so, to what? Does getting Afghanistan right mean doing different things to reach some goal of a stable Afghanistan; or does getting Afghanistan right mean getting U.S. troops out?

Again, it’s only day one of GetAfghanistanRight. Perhaps — and presumably — these questions will be addressed as its first week of blogging gets underway. Indeed, if there’s going to be an effort to actually persuade people against the troop escalation that President-elect Obama campaigned on, they’ll need to be.

Some, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, favor money for less conventional warfare. Others, such as Rep. Jack Murtha, (D-Penn.), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, want cash for fancy weapons to fight future conflicts.

However interesting, this debate has little basis in reality. The Pentagon spends an incomprehensible sum of money on both current and “future” wars — and will continue doing so next year, thanks to a 7 percent increase in its budget. The $488-billion spending plan, which does not include money for Iraq and Afghanistan, was passed at the height of the financial crisis, which means that the Wall Street meltdown probably wasn’t a factor in lawmakers’ thinking.

Gates wasn’t much of a factor either, because spending on such programs as Future Combat Systems and F-22 fighters, which he has criticized, increased.

The Journal article liberally quotes from Gates and Murtha as if their competing priorities will force defense appropriators to make a choice somewhere down the road.

But that’s unlikely to happen in the next administration. Both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain wish to increase defense spending. The Pentagon, meanwhile, wants to add $450 billion over the next five years.

And Congress is least likely to go along with any tough spending choices. The defense bill it just passed shows that lawmakers depend on these pricey weapons programs for jobs in their districts.

Pentagon spending has more than doubled during the Bush administration. It’s not clear where the political will to reduce defense outlays will come from.