text: This is budget trick number 32alpha.  Right out of the standard playbook.  If you really want to avoid hard budget decisions; if you want a tax increase, tie it to an essential that would be very inconvenient to oppose.  Kids, cops, firefighters are all good targets.  Pet projects never are.  Ask the Army to take a budget cut and the first thing it proposes to cut is essential maintenance always deflecting away from the hot new wiz bang hypersonic goody they want so bad.  A tax here protects a pet project elsewhere.  Money is fungible.  Little lines on a spread sheet are even more fungible.