We need an excise tax on the wealthy to pay for the wars.

We should continue undoing George W. Bush's effect on the country. Every step we take in that direction is healthy. And one thing the Republicans need to understand is that they still have a long way to go on paying for the damage they and their leader, George W. Bush, caused us. There is the little matter of the wars, for example. That piper still hasn't been paid.

Bush and the Republicans put us into an unnecessary, ruinously costly war in Iraq. Then that huge Bush/Republican mistake lengthened and grossly inflated the cost of the arguably more necessary Afghanistan War. Unfortunately, the Republicans put all that cost on America's credit card. They gave George W. Bush our plastic, and he wore it out.

Republicans can't be allowed to skate on that. They need to make good on their debt to the American people. Someone besides the middle class American taxpayer needs to cough up some money. I think it should be the wealthy backers of the Republicans and their hero, George W. Bush.

If the Republicans aren't punished in some way for Bush's war folly, they have every incentive to repeat it. Republican backers like Halliburton directly profited from the wars. U.S. taxpayer money is still sloshing around in those Republican pockets.

Moreover, testing the limits of Guinness Book chutzpah, Republicans now use the war debt they saddled the country with as an excuse to cut infrastructure and social spending. The Bush/Republican incompetence is actually paying off for them. They think they get to waste all of the country's money on war mistakes and then juggle the books to take money out of programs they oppose politically.

That can't be allowed. We remember where our money went, and we remember who spent it. Bush's bill is still not paid and that it's a Republican bill. The people who made the mistakes are the ones who should be paying for them.