Where you tax dollars go - a graphic look at the budget

deviantART: has tracked down and displays where Congress and the administration are placing your tax dollars. Even considering Homeland Security as non-military spending over half of discretionary spending is swallowed by the War Department. It is now Orwellian to call it our Department of Defense.

To place the numbers in perspective the US population is pretty damn close to 300 million and income tax payers 100 million. So the budget calls for taking $91 from the average taxpayer this year for the Star Wars Missile Defense program and 60 cents for the Consumer Product safety Commission.

Another example is the Department of Homeland Security - $291.85 per taxpayer. The Department of "Defense" adds $15.75 per taxpayer for Homeland Security spending. Why the whole thing isn't in the Department of Defense you will have to ask Bush.

Overall War Department spending is $3,995 per taxpayer and discretionary non-military is $3,835. Social Security and Medicare are considered non-discretionary. They also have, or are supposed to have, separate funding as shown by the boxes on your W-2 form.

Right now the government is spending more of your tax dollars than it takes in. Clinton's huge surpluses have been sucked away in a black hole of Bush spending increases, wars and tax cuts.

There are two other big places your income tax dollars are going not shown. One is interest on that borrowed money. Bush has been cutting taxes although you don't notice it much because the biggest cuts are going to the very wealthy. But he is spending much, much more. That means he has to borrow money. It used to be the government borrowed money from American savers and financial institutions. Today we don't have enough money so a majority of it is coming from foreigners.

The other place not included in the budget is the war on terror - mostly direct spending for Iraq and Afghanistan. This has its own supplemental special budget requests. If Bush asks for $100 billion dollars for our fighting troops (typical) it is an extra $1,000 they are wanting this year from you. Except he is really borrowing it from your kids and grandkids because he doesn't want to raise taxes now.

Do you like this budget? Do you like all the borrowing? Do you like where your tax dollars and you children's and your grandchildren's are going? I don't and I don't think most people do. What can you do?

One, your representatives in Congress are supposed to spend the money they take from you as you want. If you don't like this budget tell them about it - loudly.

Two, Bush is not brave enough to ask you for all the money he is spending so he is borrowing huge amounts that he isn't going to pay back. That just means that when he is out of office our government is going to be forced to raise taxes and cut spending to pay all the foreigners who are lending us the money. If you don't like all this borrowing tell them about it - loudly. Tell them you want Clinton balanced budgets back.

My partisan prediction - Republicans in a few years will blame someone else and you the taxpayer for not watching your money. They will also blame the foreigners. Never mind that they controlled all branches of government as we went from peace to war, from budget surplus to deficit, from democracy to executive rule. However, they might also eventually blame Bush as he becomes less and less popular. They will not blame their policies and priorities.

Tags: taxes, budget, priorities