Brookings Inst. designed a free Game where you make the federal budget according

[napi21]

to your own desires and see what the impact is on the actual budget. The idea is to demonstrate just how difficult it is to do.

Here's a link: http://fiscalship.org/

I played it for a while and it was fun. Lots of options on lots of pieces of the budget.

[Fresh_Start]

1. In my fantasy, I want people to be able to indicate on their tax return

how they want their tax dollars allocated.

You want a wall with mexico, you say, fund that with nnnn of my tax dollars.
And then all of the responses are counted and federal budget incorporates the peoples choice on spending.
I realize it couldn't be 100% of the budget...but even being able to influence 10% of the budget directly would be eyeopening.

I'd go education, health, environment, food/shelter for the poor with my share.

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. While in Grad School, we "played" the game as an assignment ...

We had to balance, then defend our budgetary choices.

Actually, it was one of the easier assignments ... because it's easy to make the cuts on paper, without having to face those hurt by the cuts.