It was 1940, and war was enveloping Europe. In Washington,
defense costs were beginning their steep spiral into the
stratosphere. In the first six months of the year, as German
armies swept across northern Europe, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt sent Congress a series of military spending requests,
each bigger than the last. On May 16, the president asked for
$1.2 billion; on May 30, he asked for another $1.3 billion.
Congress began debating a variety of ways to pay for the
country's military buildup, and the individual income tax
quickly emerged as the most likely source of new money. Support
for exempting less income, and thus imposing higher taxes, cut
across the political spectrum; even many liberals, led by FDR,
embraced the idea. The enormous funding needs of World War II
would soon transform the income tax from a "class tax" to a
"mass tax." Throughout the New Deal, tax burdens had been very
light or even non-existent on lower- and middle-income
Americans, and Roosevelt emphasized income taxes on the v