WASHINGTON - April 14 -  

CAROL KIGER ALLEN
Rev. ROBERT MOORE
Allen is a retired economist and is on the board of the Coalition for Peace Action & Peace Action Education Fund in New Jersey. Moore is executive director for the group.

Allen said today: "Tomorrow, we'll be administering our 'Penny Poll.' People approaching the post office, many to mail their tax returns by the deadline, will be handed ten pennies and invited to distribute them among five tubes proportionate to how they would like to see their federal tax dollars spent. The five choices will include: military, environment, education, housing and health care.

"For many years, the Penny Poll has had hundreds of participants throughout the region with strikingly similar results: the vast majority of respondents wanted the majority of their federal tax dollar spent on education and health care. Next were environment and housing. By a large margin, the least popular category of spending was for the military."

Moore said today: "Yet in the Fiscal 2009 Federal Budget, 54 percent of the discretionary budget (which Congress can allocate how it wants, and thus excludes trust funds like Social Security) is for military spending, counting the cost of past wars. Less than 5 percent goes for each of the other priorities poll takers have shown, by a large margin, to be the places they want their federal tax dollars to go. The only way these distorted budget priorities will change is if we, average citizens, put enough pressure on our elected officials to insist that it change."

Background:
The War Resisters League's "Where your Income Tax Money Really Goes"

World Public Opinion's "U.S. Budget: The Public's Priorities"