If a war’s worth fighting, isn’t it worth paying for?

Congress used to raise taxes to pay for America’s wars. Isn’t it time to return to that practice?

In 1798, Congress enacted its first direct tax -- on land, houses and slaves -- to pay for the naval expansion in what historians now call the Quasi-War with France.

In 1804, Congress levied a 2.5% tax on top of import duties already in effect to create a Mediterranean Fund to pay for additional ships and naval operations against the Barbary pirates.

Eight years later, Congress doubled existing import duties and levied new taxes, then issued bonds when that revenue proved inadequate to pay for the War of 1812 against Britain.

In the case of the Mexican-American War, 1846 to 1848, taxes covered about 40% of the costs, with borrowing required to pay for the rest.

The Civil War, 1861 to 1865, led to the first income tax, but 90% of the Union’s costs were covered by money creation and debt.

In 1898, Congress enacted excise taxes on cosmetics, chewing gum, playing cards and theater admissions, and doubled tobacco and beer taxes. Lawmakers even voted for a tax on long-distance telephone calls that was not repealed until 2006. These measures wound up covering two-thirds of the cost of the Spanish-American War.

In World War I, Congress enacted a highly progressive income tax and a corporate excess-profits tax that together financed about 60% of the wartime costs.

In World War II, Congress raised income tax rates and lowered the point at which the tax kicked in, requiring almost 90% of U.S. workers to file tax returns. It also imposed a 95% excess-profits tax on businesses, established wage and price controls and rationed some goods. Even so, taxes covered only about 40% of the costs of the war.

In 1950, Congress financed the Korean War entirely by taxation, with no borrowing.

Since then, presidents and Congress have been reluctant to raise taxes to pay for our wars.

Congress voted for temporary 10% surcharges on income and corporate taxes in 1968 and 1969 to help pay for the Vietnam War, but President Lyndon Johnson mostly resorted to budgetary tricks to hide its real costs, which just added to the deficit.

We lucked out in the 1991 Persian Gulf War only because other nations contributed nearly 80% of the cost of U.S. military expenditures.

President George W. Bush refused to let the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq shrink his huge tax cuts. Since 9/11, those two conflicts have cost $843 billion. Before the troop buildup President Obama just announced, the Iraq/Afghanistan price tag for the next year was estimated at $130 billion. Sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will reportedly add an additional $30 billion to $40 billion to that bill.

Several senior Democrats in the House, led by Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.), have introduced what they call the Share the Sacrifice Act. It would impose an income surtax sufficient to cover each future year’s cost of the Afghanistan war.

Obey’s office estimates, for example, that a 1% levy would bring in revenue of $68 billion, the pre-buildup budget for Afghanistan for 2010. Families earning up to $150,000 would pay no more than $226; 60% of the burden would fall on households earning more than $250,000. The tax would not go into effect until the 2111 tax year, and it would not apply to people who served in a combat zone after the 9/11 attacks.

There are, of course, many other ways to calculate and impose taxes to offset the cost of the war in Afghanistan. Some lawmakers might also want to force the Pentagon to cut some of its other spending ($681 billion this coming budget year, according to the Congressional Budget Office).

Whatever approach might be taken, the principle at stake is not to exclude military expenditures from sound budgeting -- that is, we must raise revenue in some way to pay for what we’re spending. With the federal deficit soaring to nearly $1.4 trillion in 2010, Congress needs to explore a broad range of measures to limit the red ink.

The clever approach of the Share the Sacrifice Act is that it asks those of us who have not endured combat to pay a little extra to support those who are in harm’s way on our behalf.

Charles A. Stevenson is the author of “Congress at War: The Politics of Conflict Since 1789.”