Andrew Zajac
With the tax deadline upon us, you may be curious about just what the feds do with your money.
(Pause here for jokes and dark mutterings about bridges to nowhere and government workers accessing porn on federal computers.)
The Democratic-leaning Third Way think tank offers this breakdown on the disbursement of $13,000 or so in taxes paid by a working adult who earns $64,000:Download file
Expenditures range from $2,662 for Social Security to 13 cents for border fencing, according to the Third Way report.
The White House? The lights stay on for a mere 18 cents from our hypothetical taxpayer.
Interest on the national debt sucks up $1,085.29 and pork barrel projects costs $60.45, while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consume $593.48 and $159.82 respectively.
Those wars notwithstanding, advocacy of tax increases has been pretty much a kiss of political death, at least on the federal level, for years. If anything, the debate has been framed in terms of cutting taxes.
But the U.S. actually has one of the lower tax burdens among developed nations, according to a 2006 report by the non-partisan Urban Institute.
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