US citizens: where do our tax dollars go?

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)– which is the excellent American Quaker lobbying organization with which I have a loose affiliation– has a great downloadable flier titled Where Do Our Income Tax Dollars Go?
In case you don’t want to wait to download that PDF file, here are some of the highlights…
From every dollar you (we) pay in income tax:

    * 41 cents goes to war-related expenditures— both financial obligations from past wars, including interest on the military portion of the national debt, which altogether come up to 13c; and paying for the current wars and preparations for future wars (28c).
    * Just 1¢ goes to humanitarian aid, maintaining diplomatic missions, and international cooperation.
    * 19¢ goes to federally funded health programs; 12c to programs related to housing and other poverty-alleviation measures; 10c for interest on the non-military portion of the debt, etc., etc.

At the end of the flier, it says, “The federal budget is a reflection of our country’s moral values. Does this budget reflect your values?” And it gives information on how to lobby Congress for a more moral budget.
It strikes me, for example, that as and when we seriously restructure the US’s relationship with the rest of the world on a more rational and more effective basis, we could take just about all of that 28c per dollar of funding for present and future wars and divide it equally between: paying down the national debt (9c); investing in health and education programs at home (9c); and building strong relationships with other countries through diplomacy, international cooperation, etc (9c).
Such a program would increase the investment in global relationships by 900 percent! And in my judgment, it would be fully 1,000 percent as efficient at safeguarding the essential (and essentially human) security interests of the US citizenry as the present, heavily war-distorted allocation of our tax dollars.
FCNL’s website also has a great page with information about the many activities US citizens can undertake in this tax-payment season– which is also a time when many of our Congressional representatives will be back home for their Easter recess, and thus available to be lobbied.

4 thoughts on “US citizens: where do our tax dollars go?”

  1. Helena Cobban
    we could take just about all of that 28c per dollar of funding for present and future wars and divide it equally between:
    War Profiteering – Our Tax Dollars De-Constructed
    By Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis
    More than $300 billion in taxpayer money has been written to fund the war in Iraq, much of which has gone to government contractors responsible for rebuilding the nation we destroyed. Yet, while our servicemen and women and their families are making the ultimate sacrifices, companies loyal to the Bush Administration are busy profiting.
    Americans deserve to know where their hard earned taxpayer dollars being spent.
    The reconstruction of Iraq has included abuse, corruption, deceit, fraud, misconduct and a waste of our tax dollars by these companies. Contracts have been awarded without any competition to a number of contractors to rebuild Iraqi schools, hospitals, government buildings, roads and other infrastructure. We have relied on these contractors to rebuild a war torn Iraq. However, the reality of what our tax dollars produced is little or no progress in fundamental areas.
    Read her post My Trip to Iraq
    THE STRATEGIC FUNCTIONS OF U.S. AID TO ISRAEL
    By Stephen Zunes
    Dr. Zunes is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at the University of San Francisco
    “In 1994, Yossi Beilen, deputy foreign minister of Israel and a Knesset member, told the Women’s International Zionist organization, “If our economic situation is better than in many of your countries, how can we go on asking for your charity?””

  4. these last few years, paying taxes to the USA is making me sick. I feel an accomplice to murder. And, I believe not paying the legally owed taxes will mean they just get more money out of me.
    If I was truly ethical, I would choose poverty or move to Canada permanently. I guess I am not a truly ethical person.

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