Back in October, David Obey floated the radical idea that war spending in Afghanistan should be put in a “normal” budgetary context and put in the same fiscal constraints as health reform. Today he’s taken that idea one step further and said an escalation in Afghanistan should be paid for via a “war surtax” on high-income households.

It’ll be interesting to see how far he goes with this. Does he put together a bloc of progressive legislators who say they’ll only back a tax-financed version of the war? Would any Blue Dog budget balancers join such a group?