Brown and Nelson want to provide taxpayers with an itemized receipt indicating where their payroll and income taxes go, breaking the money down into major categories like interest on the debt, defense spending, Social Security, and Medicaid. A more detailed explanation would also be available online. The idea should appeal to citizens across the political spectrum. For liberals, it will provide a useful example of how much harder it is to cut government programs in fact than in theory, and could help dispel misconceptions about how government spends its money. For conservatives, meanwhile, the numbers will show individual taxpayers how much of their money goes to types of spending that they may oppose.