TAXATION

There is one extremely important political decision made by politicians that most voters seem to accept: citizens have no input on the taxes they pay or how politicians spend their tax dollars. Apparently, this has not been an issue for most voters since the Boston Tea Party!  While other civil rights are often the subject of protests, we rarely raise this as a right for citizen involvement!

Currently, most citizens have no direct voice for determining the budgets at any level of our government. They have no control over this issue which substantially affects their financial security, affordable housing, infrastructure, public safety, and health. Instead, the budgets for all levels of government are controlled by the personal decisions of politicians.

Moreover, members of Congress not only tell us how much tax to pay, but can spend our tax monies on anything they desire, including wars that most of us do not want. In addition, they can print as much money as they please to give to other countries, adding to our national debt. Our current national debt requires billions of our collected tax dollars just to pay the yearly interest, instead of putting the money toward government programs that benefit our citizens.

In addition, when politicians spend our tax dollars on projects and services provided by for-profit businesses or non-profit organizations, they often have little interest in holding them accountable for what they were paid to do.

A direct democracy representative would demand that every tax dollar spent on any government project should have a line-item account on-line for public viewing for any money spent on products, services, or anything else, including the salaries of every individual paid. In addition, every product produced or service to be performed for a government by a private or non-profit, should have an insurance policy to make sure that it is done as directed, and on time. In addition, any service provided by a government employee should be evaluated by their consumers to determine if its administrators have competently performed it, or need to be replaced.