A penny for your thoughts

YOU GUYS are so smart -- no, no, I mean that sincerely. I’d vote for some of you any day over a number of people known as honorable members in Congress right now.

I laid out the federal budget in my last column, breaking down the billions to a single one-buck representation of where the money goes -- first, to legally obligatory programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (44 cents total); then, out of what’s left, defense gets 21 cents, interest on the debt (a lot of which is for war spending), 9 cents and so forth, down to a penny for foreign aid.

This being tax season, I asked you how you’d spend what the IRS et al take in.

Dozens of you answered, and many of you know way more about the mechanics of budget allocations than I do. Bob of Manhattan Beach sent three single-spaced pages of analysis about overhauling tax policy and dramatically revamping Social Security. Ed of Paso Robles scolded me for not immersing myself in the particulars of military budgeting: I should know that pulling the plug on some military contracts costs more than fulfilling them. In my world, when not buying something costs more than buying it -- there’s your problem right there.

Matthew of Long Beach reworked the entire budget, cutting nearly half out of defense and “domestic spying” and using that money for paying off the debt and bulking up “income security” -- for things like school lunches. “Remember the Reagan cuts?” he asked.

If you mentioned the war, you’re angry about it. You think it’s a waste, and you want to turn off the money spigot, or at least crank it down from “torrent” to “drip,” something members of Congress refused to do, even when they voted for a withdrawal date.

Rosemary (no city) slashed the defense and homeland security budgets to 2 cents and spent 19 cents (instead of the current 12) on discretionary programs -- mostly the space program. “What we need right now is a new New World” to deal with “the global warming and overpopulation crisis, which increases the demand on our resources, by establishing colonies on the moon.”

Sherry in Orange County put Social Security and Medicare in a separate budget, inasmuch as they come from separate, specific taxes. That done, the rest of Sherry’s budget “would realistically demonstrate how huge the war costs are.... I would cut war costs, increase education support [and] medical research” and fund “other items that are pro-life (not in the Religious Right sense, which is only pro pre-birth life).”

BC, who doesn’t claim a city but is a self-defined “liberal Democrat,” hacked the military budget by 80%, raised federal education subsidies, added a single-payer health plan and cut illegal immigration by stopping employers’ “wink and a nod” system, which enriches them at other taxpayers’ expense. He also defunded the “totally failed” war on drugs.

John not only finished his taxes but “went crazy” and figured out his family’s “carbon footprint” too. He was in a fighting mood: “You realize you have no say over no-bid defense contracts, prescription drug benefits, universal healthcare.... You cannot compete with Beltway lobbyists.... [Washington] can start a war, blow stuff up ... give their buddies contracts to rebuild what they blew up.... [They can] approve torture, suspend habeas corpus ... [and] ignore a Category 5 storm my 7-year-old watched for three days on the Weather Channel.”

Quality of life is what Raymond of L.A. would spend his federal budget dollar on -- an extra half-cent each for cancer research and prevention, for water systems, for federal parklands. He also assigned an extra penny for solar and wind farms and another to hire inner-city residents to rebuild their own neighborhoods.

Norman in San Clemente took 10 cents out of “horribly wasteful” defense spending and put half toward universal healthcare and the other half into alternative fuels. Manuel in Studio City wants to “march into Battle Creek, Michigan, purchase Kellogg’s and convert Corn Flakes into ethanol .... Goodbye smog and melting ice caps.”

Erin of Oceanside found my assignment “fun but not real. When we’ve got almost $9 trillion in debt ($30,000 a person), $400 billion in an unfinished war, uncontrolled healthcare costs and 70 million baby boomers about to retire -- what’s to allocate?”

I launched my rant because you and I are all but powerless when it comes to the budget -- starting with the $3 we can direct to publicly fund elections, which just becomes money that politicians reject because it binds them to spending limits. Ben in the Valley is willing to give up not just three bucks but $4 billion to finance political campaigns “to free our elected officials from those [who] bribe them.”

In the end, I gotta like Steve’s idea. He wrote kindly, “How would I spend the $1? Give it to you to divvy up. It sounds like we’d be on the same page.”

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Steve. When I’m ready to run, I’ll come asking for your $3.