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Rangel's draft plan gets a chilly reception

Published November 27, 2006 at midnight

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The incoming Democratic leadership in the House has fortunately rejected a very bad idea from one of its own: the draft. Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has said she has no interest in reviving the conscription plan dreamed up by the next chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.

Good. Rangel is misguided in arguing that the war in Iraq disproportionately targets low-income families. The military is not a dumping ground for the underclass.

Using Defense Department data, the Heritage Foundation reports that roughly 14 percent of "wartime recruits" - people who joined the armed forces after the invasion of Iraq - come from households with a median income of $29,375 or less.

Nationwide, 20 percent of households have incomes that low or lower; so if Rangel's hopes to promote "social justice," his draft would have to target more poor people, not fewer.

Rangel's proposal is much more insidious, however. He would force every American aged 18 to 42, male and female, to perform two years of public service, either in the military or in some federal make-work program. Imagine the cost to taxpayers of forcing millions of adults to give up productive lives to satisfy Rangel's social-engineering scheme.