Federal Budget Quilt for Tax Day

Taking our lead from AFSC we made a "Federal Budget Quilt", and presented it on Tax Day in front the Post Office with the words: "What Your Taxes Pay For".

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The quilt is a bar graph that illustrates how the federal government spends our money: each color represents a proportional segment of the budget. The Iraq War, in black, is technically "off-budget" spending. You can see the remaining portion of the quilt is more than half red: red is military spending (excluding benefits to vetrans!). I made a color-key below to explain which is which. Of course, non-discretionary spending (Soc Sec) is not included, either -- but it is rather harsh to see the "sizes" of each portion. I gues it might leave you seeing "red".

More images for Tax Day:





The "Key" to the colors:
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And, yes, I could not resist adding a bit of my own personal experience to the Quilt -- I signed and dated the thing in the corner, and added the Red Sox box score from the game I was listening to while I did the lettering. An here's the blurbie from our e-mail announcement:

NOT ONE MORE DEATH, NOT ONE MORE DOLLAR. The urgency of that cry grows in magnitude daily. The impact of the war on so many fronts: healthcare, housing, environment, education, aid to Katrina victims, etc., and the awful cost in lives lost and destruction of Iraq - all make the link of deaths and dollars painfully clear. Surely it is imperative on Tax Day to say no! - not one more death - not one more dollar!

We will have two banners representing the human cost of this war:

· A 60 foot banner with 2,139 stars, representing the U.S. service men and women killed through December 2005. The count is tragically now 2,360. The Iraqis killed is estimated to be between 30,000 and 100,000.

· A 46 foot banner providing a dramatic representation of the financial cost of the war and the impact it is having on social service budgets. The banner is comprised of a series of colored fabric strips, each colored strip representing a U.S. government budget with its length proportional to the whole budget. The defense budget is proportionally 20 feet long and the special Iraqi war budget 6 feet compared to 2.5 feet for education and 8 inches for social services. While Walpole struggles to fund our schools and town services, the total spending on the Iraqi war is equivalent to a per capita cost of $1,000 or $23,000,000 for Walpole based on our population.