Robert Maguire's Library tagged WWII →  View Popular

We'll start with the Civil War. Congress enacted various income and excise taxes to meet the rising cost of the war, most of which were repealed in the years after the war.

During World War I, the 1916 Revenue Act and the War Revenue Act of 1917 increased tax revenue from $761 million in 1916 to $3.6 billion in 1918. After the war, in the 1920s, Congress cut taxes five times.

The same was true during World War II. Tax increases over several years raised revenues from $8.7 billion in 1941 to $45.2 billion in 1945. Again, tax cuts followed the war.

"Traditionally countries raise taxes to pay for wars, then cut taxes by a portion of the amount raised once peace descends," agreed J.D. Foster, senior fellow in the economics of fiscal policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

But Foster noted two caveats. One, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 came during a jobless recovery period after a recession. And the economic stimulus package championed by Obama includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years -- also in the midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The date is July 24th, 1940. The place, the New York City Field Office of the FBI. The memo, from Director Hoover, is short and cryptic:

CLEARANCE AUTHORIZED FOR FOLLOWING MESSAGE: “DUNN SAYS FOUR BATTLESHIPS AND TEN DESTROYERS OF TEXAS CLASS GOING TO CARIBBEAN TO SCOUT FOR ENGLISH WITH SIX HUNDRED RESERVE OFFICERS AND SIX HUNDRED ENLISTED MEN.”

HOOVER