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Vote on How our Taxes are Spent

I want to be in control of what I spend my money on. In today's age where the government leadership has demonstrated their inability to control spending, stop the tax funds from being spent on foolish programs, I think it's time that Americans start to make the decision.

Why not ask the tax payers (us!) what we want our tax dollars to be used for? I propose a 10 year plan to The Tax Choice. Whenever we do taxes, we also fill out a form about where we want our tax dollars to go.

The first 3 years is a non-binding plan to see what and where people chose to place there money and see how close it matches our current balance. 

At first, we can have broad areas to chose based on the different departments, but depending on what we want, we can decide on as much detail as we want. For starters, I an chose to put 25% of my taxes towards the Department of Defense budget, 25% towards Department of Energy, 25% towards Department of Labor, and 25% towards NASA. How much detail is up to debate. For example, I probably shouldn't be able to select whether my defense budget taxes go towards a specific project, say "a new airplane", but I should be able to say that I don't want any of my money going to weapons programs to sell to Saudi Arabia (as an example).

The next 7 years increases the push towards making our choices the real budget. Possibly, a quarter of the money goes to where people vote it to go, and then 50%, etc..

Advantages of the Tax Choice:
1. Reduces special interests. Stops lobbyists from lobbying our congresspeople. If they want to lobby, the American people, then they can still do that (it's called advertising).
2. Parts of the government would have to justify themselves and their jobs to the American people. This has the potential affect of creating a more open/transparent government. I  bet we'd find some departments would go away and others would find themselves with lots more money.
3. Makes me much more happy to pay my taxes when I can chose where my money goes.
4. Opens up the debate about what we want our government to do for us.

Disadvantages:
1. American people would have to pay attention. Could we?
2. Populism could be moved to the extreme and parts of the government may find themselves out of a job, but their job must still be done. 

What's this about?

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