"Most Americans don’t know this, but every time they make a long-distance telephone call they are paying a tax to fund the Spanish-American War.

A reasonable person might point out the fact that the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, almost 108 years ago. Furthermore, the war lasted from mid-April to mid-December of that year. In monetary terms, the U.S. spent about $250 million on the war, which was a lot of money for that time.

Yet it was not enough, in my opinion, to justify a special tax on the American people for the next century, and then some.

So, like any other reasonable person might, I have repeatedly voted in Congress to end the Spanish-American War Telephone Tax. Finally, the Treasury Department has agreed, and this archaic, arcane tax will be no more.

For the first time in 108 years, Americans will be able to make long-distance telephone calls without paying this tax. As anyone who has opened a telephone bill lately knows, the laundry list of taxes there is full of small charges and tolls. Well, now there will be one less of them.

On July 31, the Treasury Department will stop collecting the three percent excise tax on U.S. long distance telephone calls. In addition, Americans who paid this tax in the last three years will get a refund with their 2006 federal tax return next year. This amounts to a rather large chunk of change, as tax receipts from this period total $13 billion. Rest assured, we have paid the cost of the Spanish-American War many times over under this tax.

There is a larger point to consider, however, and it concerns the idea of taxation. When Congress imposes a tax on the American public, whether it be for a specific need or a general need, that tax is extraordinarily hard to remove from our onerous tax code. Many taxes remain on the books long after they have served their budgetary purpose. Others, like the Alternative Minimum Tax, creep year after year towards the middle class because they are not properly indexed for inflation. U.S. federal tax law is so long and complicated that, if you piled it in books on a Southern Missouri kitchen table, well, you would have to go get another kitchen table.

As difficult as it can be to get rid of old taxes, it is unreasonably hard to keep existing tax cuts in place.

Liberals in Congress refer to the tax cuts we passed in 2001 as though they ought to expire as soon as we can get them off the books – as though the fundamental levels of the tax code had never changed. They impose a ten-year limit on the amount of time a tax cut can remain in law, and Congress must pass separate laws to make tax cuts permanent.

It is one of the few examples of a law Congress makes "for the time being." When American families face income tax increases because of temporary death tax relief and momentary elimination of the 15 percent income tax rate, their own budgets become uncertain. That uncertainty means bad things for our economy on many levels, so Congress must pass permanent tax relief, as if to say, "yes, we really mean it."

Tax cuts that are in danger of expiring and outdated taxes (like the Spanish-American War Telephone Tax) which are allowed to persist, constitute an ill-fitting policy for modern times.

Without smart tax policy, there is little hope for a straightforward, commonsense budget process. In both cases, accountability to the taxpayer must come first. Though the Spanish-American War Telephone Tax is dead – let it continue to serve as a reminder that any new tax on the American people is a call on which the charges will be difficult to reverse."