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Separate taxes for each item of spending wouldn't work. You would just generate another tax for collating the various items of spending.
No, what you need it a simplified, progressive tax system. Basically, someone bloody minded enough to go through and eliminate a lot of the exceptions as to just what constitutes income, and simplify just what constitutes expenditure.
The trouble is of course, whatever tax code you have, it is either written by the rich, who have enough know how to keep themselves from paying too much, or the poor, who don't have enough know how and thus end up coming up with something overly vague.
And also, any major change, even over to a simpler system, results in disruptions to income over the short term - which America can't afford until it is out of the position it is in now thanks to massive overspending by the Republican government.
I would venture to guess that 60% of the pure waste of money going through government's hands right now is through the Pentagon. This is because I honestly can't think of when last the Pentagon had to actually really account for its spending.
The Republicans aren't going to do anything about this, for all of their talk on "Fiscal responsibility" they aren't terribly good with public money - and they translate security as being how much money is spent on defense, not on how well managed that money is.
Obama as a Democrat, and as the leftwing candidate stands a far greater chance of tackling wasted expenditure.
