Curb government waste through transparency not tax cuts and caps.

On a federal, state, and local level Americans need to know how their tax dollars are being spent. But often government budgets are hidden or when they are made public they have line items like "necessary annual expenses" therefore you won't really know how your money is being spent. Also there is a lot finagling with tax dollars through common high finance practices that you have be a CPA or tax attorney to understand.

The George Orwell novel, "1984" warned of the horrors of a totalitarian government where their leader "Big Brother" is always watching you. Well in a democracy in the digital age all citizens have the potential to be government's "Big Brother." Through the use of the Internet we have the potential ability to see how all of our money is being spent. I don't understand why there hasn't been a more vocal movement to do this. Instead you have politicians pushing tax caps which may control spending, but does nothing for potential corruption of tax dollar use. You also have right-wing yahoos like Grover Norquist getting politicians agreeing not to raise taxes through a pledge. Wouldn't it be great if someone could get congress members to sign a pledge to always act ethically, and keep all of their actions as transparent as possible. The recent insider trading scandal that the news program "60 Minutes" recently aired shows how politicians will take every opportunity to take advantage of their position and pay little regard to ethics. Therefore it would be an impossible task to get them to sign an ethics pledge.

There are federal laws on the books that encourage transparency of spending through the use of the Internet but there is little enforcement of this.

In conclusion, we have to stop looking at capping and restricting new taxes without first looking at how our money is being spent. We must control corruption before we look at controlling spending.