Year after year, a local tax day penny poll shows that people in Lane County would spend their tax money differently than the U.S. government.

On April 15, the weekend before taxes were due, Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC), the NAACP, 350 Eugene and other groups came together at EWEB Plaza for a “tax justice rally and march to challenge militarism and oppose the federal government’s tax policies that benefit the rich and powerful,” according Michael Carrigan of CALC. 

Carrigan says people were handed 10 pennies, “which they deposited in jars representing a six-category breakdown of the federal budget.”

The highest number of pennies went to environmental services at 39 percent. Twenty-one percent of the funds went to human services, 19 percent to veteran services, 11 percent to general government and 6 percent to the national debt. The military got the least amount of pennies at 3 percent. 

“If we ran this country things would be very different — our tax dollars would be supporting people and planet Earth and not endless war,” Carrigan says in a press release.

He adds that, according to a banner Susan Cundiff of WAND unfurled at the event that outlined the breakdown of President Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2019 budget, 61 percent of funds appropriated by Congress will go to the military.