Check Here for a 1040 Revolt : Taxes: Wouldn’t it be fun to say how we want our tax contributions spent?

A few years ago, I was offered a credit card by a company that promised to funnel five cents from every purchase to socially conscious organizations. I liked the idea, so I took the card. Now, once a year I’m sent a list of about 50 nominated organizations, and I pick the ones I’d most like to fund.

It struck me, as I was making my choices last week, that this is the very kind of system that should be used at the Internal Revenue Service. The problem with the current system is not that I pay too much in taxes. It’s that I--a middle-income wage earner--get so little back in goods and services. If some of the money I send to Washington every year ever found its way back into my neighborhood, I wouldn’t mind paying more taxes. As it is now, though, my needs and the needs of my neighbors are ignored.

If the wealthy class and the military Establishment have a major impact on who gets elected (as they have for the past 50 years), then it should come as no surprise that those who do get elected make sure that their benefactors are taken care of before--or instead of--everyone else. That’s why we haven’t seen a peace dividend even though we no longer face a military threat anywhere in the world. That’s why “the education President” bails out failed banks but not the public schools. That’s why Congress would rather fund “Star Wars” than children’s immunization programs. That’s why we have a phony war on drugs instead of a real war against infant mortality.

This unholy alliance of politicians and the wealthy amounts to an oligarchy--a Brahmin class that has made the rest of us irrelevant.

I say, enough. I say it’s time we had a say in where our money should be spent. I say, let’s mount a nationwide campaign to make Congress appropriate the revenue from personal income taxes according to our wishes. I suggest a checkoff list on our 1040s:

EDUCATION, WELFARE and SOCIAL PROGRAMS, HEALTH, DEFENSE and NATIONAL SECURITY, TRANSPORTATION and ENVIRONMENT, FOREIGN AID.

Under these headings would be sub-categories. For instance, under TRANSPORTATION and ENVIRONMENT, you would be able to earmark, say, 20% for mass transit, 10% for the development of solar energy, and so forth.

In this system, our tax money would not be used to fund the pet projects of long-time Senate and House members who use the budget process as a way to wring federal money for home-state muckymucks.

The politicians of both parties are talking tax cuts these days. Some think that if they return $300 to every family, the middle-class will go on a buying binge and goose the economy. Forget it. Three hundred bucks isn’t going to do diddly for me or my family. Heck, it won’t even cover my car insurance.

We need something more radical than a tax cut. We need to overhaul the way tax money is spent. We need to demand a return on our investment.