Unless you travel by some kind of foot-power or on horseback, you've already paid for the creation, repair and maintenance of our transportation infrastructure. Licence and registration fees for private cars, SUVs and light trucks, DOT fees for heavy trucks, tolls, gas taxes ad infinitum were all promulgated for our roads (rail and otherwise), waterways, bridges, et cetera. Now there is noise about "raising money for the infrastructure." Before we feed the beast more red meat from our own limbs, we should demand to know what it's done with the blood it's already sucked from our veins. Not that we don't already know, of course: like irresponsible homeowners, the money that should have been put aside for new house paint, new roofing and general upkeep has been spent on big-screen TVs, nights out at dinner and closets full of shoes. In the case of government, it's been spent on candy programs designed to lure voters into pulling incumbents' levers in the voting booth.

Well, here's a proposition for Mr. Thompson and any other political hopeful campaigning for my vote: advocate and agitate for the passage of a restricted spending law. The idea is simple: every program has it's own tax, and money raised for one program by its dedicated tax will not be permitted to be used toward any other purpose. Such a law would be written to preclude fancy bookkeeping, just two columns: money in, and money out. No more spending anticipated revenues: if it's not cash on hand, it's not real money; and if it's not real money, they can't spend it.

    Every year, a special administrative court will present an audit of all program budgets to the public, and any diversion or misappropriation of funds will constitute a real felony with real felony jail time for any Congressman or Senator who voted for it. A presidential signature on any spending bill the terms of which would constitute such a felony would be an impeachable offense in addition to conspracy to commit the root felony, a felony in its own right.

No tax would survive more than seven years, but at the end of every seven year cycle, each tax would be given to the voters as a referrendum for a vote of confidence: the tax did or did not achieve the end toward which it was promulgated. If the voters answer that such a tax did not achieve it's published ends, Congress would have 30 days to publish a quantitative definition of the failed program's minimal success, and 2 years to make the program function as published, or all members who voted for the original bill instituting that tax must forefeit their office at the ends of their current terms. The president who signed the failed tax into law would forefiet his office at the expiration of those 2 years (if the program was not made to work as promised) to his vice president, who would be barred from running for any public office (including asst. junior dog catcher) from that time forward.

    Oh yes; and no elected official, or subordinate to any elected official, would be permitted to comment on any tax or program that failed in referrendum in its 2, probationary years. Rather, the Speaker of the House, the minority leader of the House and the Supreme Court will choose an accounting firm by mutual consent, and this accounting firm will publish all information regarding the tax in question. Such publication will not include any commentary: it will begin with the quantitative definition of success, and with no more language than column titles set forth the numbers, do what Congress promised and delivered agree? If not, every legislator voting for that program in its 2 probationary years will be liable for fraud, theft of public moneys and conspiracy to commit fraud and theft of public moneys, and shall be jailed for a period equal to total of their time served in Congress.

Let's see, under my proposal, how tax dollars are taken and spent.