To fight and win a total war a nation must expect to pay a staggering bill. Americans today do. For this war of existence, and the ideas of common man against those of a malicious oligarchy, no monetary cost is too great. Congress knows this, but has refused to face the facts courageously and levy a war-time tax proportionate to the tremendous sums being spent for materials of war. The Administration does not expect nor want to pay for the total cost of this war out of current taxes. This is impossible. But it does want and need much more revenue than the present inadequate tax bill provides.

Total expenditures for this fiscal year 1943 will total the incredible sum of seventy-seven billion dollars, of which seventy billions is for military purposes alone. This spending is at the rate of 150 million dollars a day, a figure in keeping with a war program planned for a decisive victory. There are only two ways to pay for this ever-increasing bill of the American people: one is through borrowing, the other taxation. The greater the amount of war expenditures paid for now by taxation the stronger will be the future economic foundation of the country once the war is over. The Government will be faced with a smaller debt load, which in any terms will be stupendous, and the people will be burdened with a lesser weight of taxation. To tax heavily now is to gain greater economic protection for the future.

Congress, though it has passed a severe law, has raised less than half the revenue asked by the Treasury, and failed to increase the rates on larger incomes able to sacrifice more. The present law will raise approximately twenty-four billions, not even one-third of a year's expenditures. This proportion will have to be increased, but in the meantime billions of dollars of revenue are lost to the Government. Other lost revenue is that which should come from two specially favored groups: municipal bond holders and owners of mines and oil wells. In both these groups the Government is losing hundreds of millions of dollars when it needs them most. Congress did not tax for total war.