If you would not let your employer do it then why your government?

I think you completely missed the point here, there is nothing wrong with taxes for roads etc. but the extra crud that is taken out and decided on by our government for projects we don't even hear about is ridiculous.

What extra crud are you talking about and why don't you know what your government is spending public funds on? Yes, my original response was directed at areas that most people can relate to but I can be very specific about government spending on a local level because my state has recently been hit with severe budget cuts. Some of the programs hit, which may or may not be crud, are:
Medical needy programs for low income families
Programs for pregnant women
Funding to community colleges were cut
Funding to pay for firefighters & EMS were cut
The Public Defenders office lost funding
The Office of Parole and Probation lost funding
Hospitals are losing funding
Nursing homes have lost funding
Schools are losing funding

On a national level, the federal government has had to cut back funding for drought assistance and other assistance programs for farmers. Homeland Security, Education, HUD, Energy, Transportation, Environmental Protection, Veterans Affairs, Social Security and more are supported by our tax dollars.
I'm not saying that there is no crud and no wasteful spending but, as a whole, our tax dollars benefit our communities and our families, protect our futures and allow us to be able to assist people around the world when disaster hits.

Lets talk about Highway funding. It is paid for with the gas tax which is $0.184 per gallon of gasoline and the state taxes on gasoline. (http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp) How is this money used? It is used to fund mass transit, build bike trails, walking paths, terminals, shelters and by the way some for roads.

You mention health care for the poor. Most of the states are asking for more money to fund adult health care and not even people who are low income.

Several state are spending money to advertise to get people to apply for food stamps.

You mentioned education losing funding. Lets reduce the requirement that the federal government has put on schools. Tighten up the requirements for Special Education instead of expanding them. Children who can't behave in school exspell them rather than put them in a special class. If the student does not have their work done keep them after school and require that the parents come and pick them up. make it the parents responsiblity to see that the student is educated.

I a person wants probation then let them pay part of the cost.

I appreciate your views but you're oversimplified some very complex problems.

(Wish I could cut & paste)
Are you saying that mass transit, bike & walking paths, and terminals & shelters aren't important? If the transportation dept. doesn't fund them then who should?

As for health care, my state of Florida was forced to cut health care funding across the board. As I'm sure you know, we have a large elderly population down here and those cuts translate into fewer nurses and aides in nursing homes so these helpless, frail people will have to wait longer for someone to help them.

I have no problem with states advertizing people to apply for food stamps because, if they qualify, that means that their children have been going hungry. But, the feds raised the poverty level for qualifing for many programs so, while it may seem like they're looking for more people to give aide to, many low income people who have been on the program no longer qualify under the new guidelines.

I'm not being critical but do you have something against handicapped children? In this day and age every child needs an education just to be able to work a minimum wage job so why would expanding programs to help them be wrong? And the problem with keeping kids after school is that many schools don't have the staff to stay there with them as the schools cut back on hours and overtime.

Requiring someone to pay all or part of the cost of being on probation is unrealistic because most of the people who are served by this area of law enforcement have problems which lead to their arrests in the first place. Keeping them in jail for the duration of their sentence instead of offering time off with probation keeps the jails overcrowded and increases the danger to the staff at the jails and prisons...who also felt the sting of budget cuts. Probation officers who are already swamped with cases are now expected to take on 1/4 more people so with no additional pay. Is that fair to them? How well will they be able to do what they're paid to do if they have too many cases to keep track of?

Here's another one since we were on the subject of children. The Dept of Children and Families, who deal with child abuse, is also experiencing budget cuts and those case workers are getting an increase of cases. An already overworked child abuse case worker is going to have to be able to devote time to additional children with no additional help and no additional hours magically appearing in his/her day. I don't see how funding something as important as protecting children could be objectionable.

I am not saying that bike paths, mass transit, walking paths etc are not important but the question is who should pay fir it. The Gas tax was a user fee to have the people who used the roads pay for them. Now they are saying that there is not enough money to maintain the road so we need to increase the gas tax. A couple of examples, in New York State the Staten Island ferry used to cost $0.05, per trip to use, some people felt it was unfair to the people who lived on the Island to have to pay so it is now free(due to an increase in the gas tax). There are bridges from Staten Island to New York City. In Minnesota the 8th Congressional district receive Millions in Federal Highway funding. The smallest category was for Highway construction and maintenance. The majority went for new buses, new walking and biking paths, building shelters along these paths, and a new Bus Terminal for Duluth. Why can't they charge a fee on the sale for each Bicycle and require a sticker to use the Bike trail? If it is important to them let them pay for it.

I have no problem with asking a person who wants to get out of jail to pay a small amount for that privilege. The same goes for government health care, a small payment would prevent people from running to the emergency room for a small cold. This is what is driving up the cost of hospital care.

Why should I pay for the extras for everyone when I can't afford them for my family? This fall under the category of Redistribution of Wealth or Communism.