Last month, President George W. Bush proposed his 2007 federal budget, which, in sum, comes to about $2.77 trillion. This total will surely grow to an even more incomprehensibly large number as supplementary funds for Iraq and Afghanistan are incorporated and Congress adds its own programs and pork barrel spending. What programs and policies will my taxcontributions, which total less than one-billionth-of-a-percent of the budget, go toward? I have no idea.
My tax dollars could buy a few hundred 7.62 mm NATO-issue bullets, pay for three weeks worth of coffee at an Environmental Protection Agency regional office or contribute to the salary of a Department of Justice prosecutor. Not all state and federal taxes are as untraceable as income taxes. Some, such as gasoline taxes, are dedicated to legally defined purposes, such as highway maintenance and construction, and should probably be considered more as "user-fees" than anything else.
For me, not knowing exactly where my personal contribution goes, even if I understand the entire budget, makes paying taxes far more palatable. If there is a politician I abhor, I can be comforted with the hope that I may not have paid for their vacation. Conversely, I can always tell myself that I played a small part in funding a program I love.
This state of blissful ignorance could change, however. There are numerous proposals on both the state and federal level designed to ensure that individuals and groups would know precisely what projects they are and aren't funding. One of the more prominent is known as the Peace Tax Fund, which calls for legislation "enabling conscientious objectors to war to have their federal income taxes directed to a special fund which could be used for non-military purposes only."
These types of regulations, known as tax credits, also include programs that allow individuals and corporations to choose specific schools or educational institutions to be the effective recipients of nearly all of their tax dollars. Instead of checks being written out to the Internal Revenue Service, they would now be written out to a private school to pay for tuition or books.
On one level, I can understand why pacifists would be hesitant to fund nuclear weapons or fighter aircraft, or why people would want their taxes to directly fund private or religious schools they consider worthy of support. But allowing taxpayers to directly choose what programs they fund is a profoundly flawed idea.
These types of tax credit schemes have several faulty assumptions. The first is practical: the accounting logistics of funneling specific monies to specific funds is daunting, and administrative waste would be considerable. Moreover, how would you define "non-military purposes?" Would hospital ships or National Guard firefighters qualify under that category? For that matter, who would decide what type of "school" counted as a school? Would home schooling expenses, which are educational but not necessarily federally funded, be included?
Besides being inefficient, allowing taxpayers to decide where their individual taxes go is anathema to the conception of government as something that serves everyone's interests and not merely those of the stakeholders of a few programs.
The separation of lawmaking powers between the executive and legislative branches ensures that any government policies have the support, or at least tolerance, of a solid majority of the country. Choosing not to fund the defense department, or directing tax dollars towards nongovernmental institutions such as religious schools, which would bring up difficult issues of separation of church and state, is a rejection the concept of both majority rule and checks and balances.
The Constitution sets a framework that ensures that all citizens contribute towards federal expenditures, under the assumption that having a military or a public infrastructure benefits everyone. To that end, paying taxes is a fundamental responsibility of citizenship, not a symbolic or political act akin to the right to speech or assembly. Taxation is about public actions and policies rather than individual beliefs, and therefore taxation lies at the very heart of government. In a democratic government such as ours, those policies are determined through the consent of the governed, and that consent is given through the long and deliberative process known colloquially as checks-and-balances. The financial support of government policies through taxation is an extension of this democratic process.
If we, as a society, want a government that broadly serves the needs of everyone, we need to ensure that our priorities and policies are chosen through representation - not by each person deciding what they themselves want to do with their individual dollars. Otherwise, there's not much point of government at all.
Joey Borson '07 wants his tax dollars going to a cheesesteak fund.
