Where Should our Tax Dollars Go?

In the minds of many of us I think this is the foundation of disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans.  The extreme of both sides have bigger and larger segregations, but for the average person this is really a basic question that ultimately drives the choices in the election.  Of course there are hard-core believers on both sides.  For example, I know Democrats who think nothing of calling a Republican politician stupid, claiming Bush is the devil incarnate, and refusing to believe anything the Republican Party espouses can be a good thing for the country.   Without bothering to check the facts they believe all Republicans are greedy evil-doers who work only for the rich.  They do this while at the same time supporting the class warfare approach of the President putting all the problems of the country on the rich, and their tax rates.  That said, there are an opposite number of Republican fanatics that believe the election of President Obama and elevation of Nancy Pelosi to Speaker of the House signaled the end of mankind.  They will find any and every reason to believe the Democrats are guiding America to ruin and believe they are truly all communists at heart.  They too will name call and find petty fault with every choice made.  As someone who views myself as middle of the road kind of guy I've got to say the Democrats approach has really made the Republicans job pretty easy. 

I freely admit, under full disclosure, I disagree with much of what Congress and the President have done with regards to spending these last five years.  You should note that period covers both Democratic and Republican Presidents and Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses.  I guess that would make me a closet Tea Party supporter.  The interesting thing about the emergence of the Tea Party is the fear it instills in both main parties.  The difference is the approach they take in dealing with them.  The core of the Democratic party, who are primarily Liberal, Progressive, or Socialist all deride the members as loose, wing nut, radicals.  They belittle their objectives and attempt to make them seem like the lunatic fringe.  The mainstream Republicans have shown a little better judgment and reluctantly embraced them, if for no other reason they needed help to counter the Democratic control of the House and Senate.

But what gets lost in the media, and mainstream party propaganda is the ground swell of people who believe their tax dollars are not being spent wisely and those who are charged with leading the governments (local, state, and federal) are not listening to them.  It is easy to make fun of Sarah Palin, and others who have chosen to buck the big government trend when the party faithful follows blindly the condescending rhetoric of the professional spin-doctors.  What I find so funny in this is the ones who are most vitriolic in their attacks are those who claim they are the most forward thinking and tolerant people around.  They support all the progressive ideals, except the open and free exchange of opposing views.

 So, back to the original question where should our tax dollars go?  This is not the same question as to how much should the rich be taxed, or how much should the poor be subsidized?   The simple question I ask is this, what should the government priority list for spending be?  Even in these years of trillion dollar deficits there are things we don’t fund, so why not, just like we must individually do, why not set up a list of priorities and when we run out of funds cut off the list at that point?

For example, a family on a budget will have a list that looks something like:

ü  Mortgage – 30%

ü  Food – 30%

ü  Car – 10%

ü  Clothing – 10%

ü  School – 10%

ü  Church – 10%

ü  Entertainment – shucks we’re out of money

Why doesn’t the government have a list that is published and perhaps even voted on?  Well in the first place our Constitution doesn’t create a democracy that would demand this, it created a representative republic that empowers the politicians to make those choices, and no politician really wants to be held accountable if they can avoid it.  Maybe that is really the question that should be asked of all candidates this year.  What are your priorities if we could not spend more than we took in for taxes?  I would be interested to see how the primary candidates would answer that in a public forum.