Kyle; you do have a point, and I will grant you the tendency for politicians and their counterparties to play politics; supporting a need for funding transparency and debate. However, we must also critique the invisible hand metaphor for its role in supporting monopoly style rents. Research examples include Big Tabacco’s use of biased research to delay inevitable court actions or big oil and big coal throwing a monkey wrench into climate policy. Overall, current government waste pales significantly in comparison to the trillions of dollars in tax we all pay for corporate rents. Have you seen a cable or cellphone bill recently? Economic Rent Tax should really be a line item.