A Simple Proposal

Terry Newell, Founder, Leadership for a Responsible Society, recently made what he called a "simple proposal" to address two problems with the current public appetite with budget cutting.  The first problem:  Americans have very inaccurate understandings of what their government currently spends money on.

For example, almost three-fourths of Americans in a 2010 Zogby Poll think we spend 6% or more of the federal budget on foreign aid. More than a third think we spend 11% or more. We actually spend about 1%. Needless to say, cutting foreign aid -- often the most popular choice of Americans to fix the budget, wouldn't make the dent in the deficit we might think.

The second problem is that a depressing number of Americans don't understand how they personally benefit from Federal spending and tax policies.   A simple example:

... 60% of those who claim the mortgage-interest deduction report that they "have not used a government social program." Percentages for student loans (53.3%), social security (44.1%) and Medicare (39.8%), to cite three other examples, highlight the fact that those who attack "social spending" are attacking their own benefits in many cases.

Newell proposes a "simple solution."   He suggests that the government issue an annual report to each citizen which sets out in two pages how Federal money was spent in the past year and how those funds applied to that citizen.   Much of the data can be culled from everyone's tax return, and other data is already in government computers.   His idea is very similar to the one proposed last year by the The Third Way, a think tank, about which I blogged last October.  It also relates to another post from April of 2010 which contained a long list of government programs and benefits which many people use, but don't often think about when demanding cuts to all those "socialist entitlements" that other people get.

Either proposal would go a long way to counter the current uninformed budget cutting fever, which is based on ignorance, rather than intelligent debate.

You Should Get A Receipt

In a report from a think tank called Third Way, the group argues that taxpayers should get a receipt in order to clearly understand what they're paying for.  The sample receipt includes both income and Social Security/Medicare taxes and how much of your money goes where.

Image from National Public Radio (npr.org)

A recent article about the so-called "Tea Party" groups included a conclusion that tea partiers are opposed to government spending - except for the money spent on them.   Perhaps that's at least partly because most Americans have no idea where their tax payments go.  A receipt might help; it certainly wouldn't hurt.  As the Third Way points out, it doesn't require complicated math and would be pretty easy for the IRS to implement on its web site.  

It's a great idea that will never happen. An educated electorate is every politician's nightmare.

The report can be found here.