Make your own federal budget choices with this new on-line tool.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group of gurus who fret about our future (don't we all these days?) has just published a great little tool/game you can use to look at how various spending and tax changes would affect our ability to reach a "sustainable" budget by the year 2020. Try the Budget Simulator.
My favorite among the choices is to increase the gas tax by 10 cents, but I would do a lot more than that! I would vary the gas tax inversely with the oil price to maintain an at-the-pump price of $3.50 (regular), rising gradually to $4.00 per gallon over the next 5 years. That would send the signal that the market needs for manufacturers to invest in energy-saving car models, and for consumers to favor conservation. A double win! Our dependence on foreign fuel would gradually stabilize itself, and some tax revenue would help with the deficit. (We could give some of it back to the working poor by exempting the first $10K of income from social security tax.) My wise environmental activist lawyer friend Ben says this approach would be dead on arrival in the Congress. I'm going to start my own oil-can party, or maybe I'll call it the "Can Oil"Party.