As a congresswoman, Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) backed legislation to block funding for body armor and medical supplies for U.S. troops. The current Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate co-sponsored legislation in every session of Congress from 2003 until 2009 to allow taxpayers opposed to the military, Department of Defense, and various intelligence agencies to withhold their tax dollars from being spent in support of those entities. Specifically, the legislation allowed individual taxpayers to block funding that would be used, “the training, supplying, or maintaining of military personnel.” That would include body armor, medical supplies, and other non-offensive equipment.

At least three times Baldwin co-sponsored the legislation, in 2003, 2005 and 2009. The 2011 version of the bill does not list Baldwin’s name as a co-sponsor. At that time she was possibly contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate.

The legislation is a project of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, a far Left pacifist group. The legislation is the centerpiece of their existence and has previously attracted the support of more well known members of Congress, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who was Speaker of the House between 2007 and 2011.

Denying body armor and medical supplies to U.S. military personnel who were fighting two wars at the same time is not a politically popular position. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Rep. Nancy Pelosi dropped her sponsorship of the Peace Tax Fund. The nation’s military was being thrust into combat and troops would need not just combat weapons, but protective equipment and supplies that could save their lives.

It was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks as American troops went into harm’s way on a scale not seen in decades that Baldwin began to co-sponsor the legislation.

Despite the fact that some believed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were controversial, many on both sides of the political aisle thought that the troops deployed should at least receive the supplies and protection they needed. Baldwin’s work on the so-called Peace Tax Fund actively sought to block funding for needed protection and life-saving equipment for these deployed military personnel.

At the height of the Iraq and Afghan wars, American troops relied heavily on body armor to protect them against a rising tide of terrorist attacks carried out with suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices.