Principled Spending

I appreciate Rick's response to my point on reallocation of existing government funds.  Just two (relatively) minor additional points:  First, when I wrote that we should be able to articulate our spending priorities in terms of political accountability, I mean something more than just going through the federal budget and finding items that we would want to trade for more noble causes.  I mean proactively setting out an attainable objective and contextualizing the cost in terms of the myriad trivial (but enjoyable) expenditures that make up our everyday lives.  I may be naive, but I do think the public can be pushed to action when the budget numbers are given real-world bite.  Second, I did not bring up the $406 billion spent on Iraq as an example of an after-the-fact audit of government spending like the second-guessing of public education budgets.  To me, the Iraq war is an example of an expenditure that should have been avoided on the front end as a matter of principle -- i.e., as a violation of just war theory (no imminent threat).  In this context, adhering to the wisdom of Catholic social thought would have freed up resources to pursue morally urgent matters (while leaving some money for ice cream).