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ORIGINALLY POSTED BY SIGNY

Let's try an opinion poll, of several questions:

1) Out of every $100 that you pay in INCOME taxes, how much do you want to go to

The military
Homeland Security (the technical overseer of all of the alphabet-soup agencies except military intelligence)
Education, as direct funds to schools
The environment, like the EPA, clean water
Health (such as the CDC, FDA, and NIH research)
Clean energy, energy conservation, and energy independence
Infrastructural investment (public roads, bridges, sewers, dams, water lines etc)

For me, it would be
$20 for a solid energy program
$10 for the environment
$20 for education
$10 for infrastructure
$10 health
$5 assistance to the poor and disabled
$5 financial reform
$5 military
$5 intelligence
$10 paying down the debt

2) If you could, would you like to buy into Medicare for health insurance at a slight premium over cost?

Yes.

3) Social Security is solvent for now. Would you rather make minor changes to the program to continue projected solvency for the foreseeable future (roughly 75 years?) Or would you rather privatize the program?

Make minor changes to existing programs.

See? Choices.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I like the idea of emergency reserves. Something unpredictable always comes up. You can't predict what, when, and where, but the laws of average guarantee that somewhere, sometime, shit happens.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So, here are the categories, followed by the percentage of the budget which is "mandatory", and the percentage of the budget which is "discretionary". For example, National Defense mandatory spending currently accounts for 0.31% of the total budget, but discretionary defense spending accounts for 54.45% of the total budget.

So, let's see if we can work within these categories, but tell me how you would like the spending prioritized and category details:

National Defense 0.31 54.45
International Affairs -0.06 4.81
General Science, Space & Technology 2.39
Energy 0.29 1.21
Natural Resources and Environment 0.10 2.99
Agriculture 0.48 0.52
Commerce and Housing Credit 0.86 0.17
Transportation 2.58 3.02
Community and Regional Development 0.04 1.84
Education, Training, Employment and Social Services 0.03 7.86
Health 12.43 4.81
Medicare 19.51 0.52
Income Security 19.46 5.23
Social Security 30.57 0.47
Veterans Benefits and Services 2.64 4.40
Administration of Justice 0.39 3.65
General Government 0.36 1.65
Net Interest 9.71 0.00
Allowances 0.26 0.00

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