CNN asked its readers their opinions on how to balance the budget. Most of the responses were typical and either fell into the raise taxes or lower spending regimes. However, there was one - and only one - interesting idea.

Mark Price of Charleston, South Carolina
Balancing a budget is simple. Allow each voter a given number of “budget points” to allocate as (s)he sees fit. Then total the points for each budget item and divide the revenue from legally-collected taxes among them accordingly. We might even increase voter participation by creating a “Sim-Budget” game type of interface.

This is never going to happen, but let’s look at how it would need to be implemented if it did. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to call “budget points” just points.

The amount a person pays in taxes is proportional to the amount s/he earns and spends. A person who earns more money will probably spend more money as well. Assume person A pays X amount in taxes, and person B pays 100X. If each of the people received the same amount of points, it would place too much emphasis in the budget on lower income people. While those in the lower income range tend to be under-represented in government, person A would effectively have 100 times the power as person B to influence decisions. This is unfair to higher income earners. Thus, all voters could cannot have the same number of points.

Another idea is that the amount of points depends directly on the amount paid in taxes. This makes the most sense to me. A person should be able to direct where their tax dollars are going. If person A wants all of their tax dollars to be allocated for Social Security, and person B wants it all for the defense budget, that is where it should go.

But how to efficiently gauge the interest in where taxpayer monies should go. A voter cannot be expected to know each and every program on the national budget. Instead, the voter would get presented with a list of government agencies. Each agency would have a list of major services provided by that department. For instance, the Department of Defense would have items for the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan. The Department of Commerce would have items for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Census Bureau. Each department would have the most important and well-known function in their list. Of course, we’d also need to fund the many independent agencies.

The job of Congress would be to sort the money. That’s it. But it’s a harder job than it sounds, though much easier than the system currently in place. In the voting booth, not every program of every agency can be an option. It would make choosing where to spend the points difficult. Let’s say I have 100 points to spend on the entire budget. I would want to spend a large portion of my points on science research, particularly NOAA, NASA, and NSF. Smaller portions would be scattered in the other Departments. But I only have 100 points, and there are too many programs that I want funded to use those points. So I need to be able to select broad areas and have Congress channel the money to appropriate areas.

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