Time to take out the good ol’ fashioned paper and pen and create your budget. As George Lakoff once wrote, a budget is a value document. So enter numbers based on your values. When you’re done, scroll down to compare your budget with the one governing United States federal spending.
Directions: Enter a percentage of the budget that you would spend on each of these six broad categories. (If you’re feeling industrious, fill in each little line item.) Make sure the total equals 100%.
FRIENDLY FOREIGN RELATIONS____%
Economic development aid to select foreign countries, medical aid to poor nations, and development aid to poor nations, the Peace Corps, and disaster relief abroad: ____%
State Department: ____%
United Nations, peacekeeping, weapons nonproliferation: ____%
HOSTILE FOREIGN RELATIONS____%
Military and Homeland Security Department and military “aid” to other nations: ____%
Current wars: ____%
Veterans’ benefits: ____%
SUSTAINABLE POLICIES____%
Job training, mass transit, and a jobs program to build renewable energy infrastructure and mass transit: ____%
Management of public lands: ____%
Pollution control and Renewable energy research: ____%
Subsidies to small farmers: ____%
EDUCATION AND RESEARCH____%
Elementary and secondary education, and higher education, and special education for students with disabilities: ____%
Medical research: ____%
Scientific research: ____%
Nasa: ____%
BASIC GOVERNANCE____%
Law enforcement and federal prisons: ____%
Housing for the poor and elderly: ____%
Paying off national debt: ____%
BIG AGRICULTURE AND BIG TRANSPORTATION____%
Airports and railroads and highways: ____%
Subsidies to big agriculture: ____%______
______
Now compare what you did with what the White House projects for 2015.