Trump’s Foreign Adventures Will Cost Taxpayers Billions

Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot on his mind in the spring of 1942, as he girded the US for a long, brutal battle against the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific. There was the daunting challenge of retooling factories to make bombs and tanks. The logistics of moving thousands of troops overseas and supplying them with uniforms and food. And the public-relations campaign to prepare Americans for the grim reality that many of the millions of young men drafted to fight wouldn’t be returning home.

Amid all this hurried planning, the president was also preoccupied with another urgent question: How would the US pay for this enormous undertaking, which at the height of the war consumed the present-day equivalent of $250 million a day? FDR was determined not to simply pile up public debt. Instead, he made the hard case for funding the conflict “as we go,” in part by imposing higher taxes on corporations and a 94% tax rate on personal income above $200,000. Roosevelt cautioned Congress against “passing on to future generations more than their just share of its sacrifices and burdens.”