Pollster Frank Luntz - Infrastructure: It’s Job 1 to Americans (via southpol)

I’d like to borrow an idea from George Carlin. Imagine if your tax forms let you specify where your tax dollars went (whether it was by ranking, or by explicit allocation). Unpopular programs would have small budgets, and popular programs would have big budgets. Ok, that’s absurd. Of course, saying that we’d accept a 1% tax increase to pay for something when we’re already $10 trillion in the hole doesn’t really make much sense either. 1% is $130 billion, give or take. We can tax ourselves 100% and still be in the hole for a few years, and that’s without funding any new projects. We spent $412 billion on national debt interest payments last year. People don’t really understand the magnitude of the problems we face. At the state level: California could fire every single state employee, close all of the prisons, and still go bankrupt.

We need to pay what we owe. 1% isn’t going to cover it.