Until the Civil War, the U.S. government relied almost exclusively on tariffs on imported goods, a practice that provoked conflict between Northern m… - David Meyer Wessel

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Until the Civil War, the U.S. government relied almost exclusively on tariffs on imported goods, a practice that provoked conflict between Northern manufacturers who favored tariffs to keep imports out and Southern farmers who did not. An income tax was imposed during the Civil War, but proved so unpopular that it died in 1872. In its place, the government imposed taxes on alcohol and tobacco that accounted for 43 percent of all federal revenue by 1900. Repeated attempts to revive the income tax were thwarted when the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1895. But the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution changed that. Less than eight months after it was ratified in February 1913, Congress enacted an income tax.

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About David Meyer Wessel

David Meyer Wessel (born February 21, 1954) is an American journalist and writer. He has shared two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism. He is director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution and a contributing correspondent to The Wall Street Journal, where he worked for 30 years.

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Alternative Names: David Wessel

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Nearly all the growth in the federal budget over the next ten years [2013-2022] is going to come from spending on healthcare and interest payments unless something changes. “You can’t fix this without doing health care,” says Paul Ryan. “I mean, health care is the driver of our debt.” And, as he and others routinely observe, even though the United States spends far more per person on health care than any other country, it isn’t close to having the world’s healthiest population.

In the high-volume debate over taxes, facts about basic issues—who pays? how much? who doesn’t?—often get lost, twisted, or distorted. Perhaps the most salient and overlooked fact is this one: for most Americans, federal taxes have not risen over the past couple of decades.

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The public remains strikingly misinformed about the budget. The typical respondent to a CNN poll said food stamps accounted for 10 percent of federal spending; it’s closer to 2 percent. Maybe being off by a factor of five is understandable given the enormity and complexity of the budget. But it’s harder to make sense of a 2008 Cornell University poll in which 44 percent of those who receive Social Security checks and 40 percent of those covered by Medicare say they “have not used a government social program.”

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