Portsmouth Herald

And this little piggy takes your taxes

   
By Elizabeth Kenny      
   

PORTSMOUTH -- About $420 billion in federal tax dollars goes to the Pentagon
for defense spending each year, and that is not including the budget for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Russell Howze from Priorities! New Hampshire spent Saturday afternoon in
Prescott Park sharing this information and more about the way federal tax
dollars are spent.

"The primary focus of the campaign is to educate citizens about how the
federal budget is broken down," Howze said.

And what better way to do that than with carnival games and three giant
piggy banks?

Priorities! New Hampshire, a nonprofit organization also described as
nonpartisan, camped out in Prescott Park for about four hours, giving
passers-by an opportunity to spin the "budget wheel of fortune" and take
photos in front of three piggy banks of different sizes that represent the
way in which the federal government spends tax dollars.

The first pig in the "Pig Mobile," the creation of Ben and Jerry's
co-founder Ben Cohen, was the largest and represented the $420 billion spent
on defense. The second, medium-sized, piggy bank represented the $34 billion
spent on education, and the third, smallest piggy on the trailer was for the
$10 billion spent fighting world AIDS and hunger.

Daniel Sutton of Massachusetts stopped by the event with his two children
and said, although he works for the government, he feels the country's
priorities need to be adjusted. Sutton said he would prefer to see more
support for education and health care.

"We need to spend it on programs that help people," Sutton said.

While the first goal of the campaign is to educate the public, Howze said
the second goal may be just as important: To promote the Common Sense Budget
Act in the U.S. Congress.

The act, which was introduced in March, stipulates that $60 billion of the
Pentagon's budget is wasteful spending and should be reallocated to other
important areas of the budget like those that Sutton sees as priorities,
Howze said.

"It's a common sense thing."