In my opinion, many people have very distorted and inaccurate views about how taxes are spent. These distorted views adversely affect political decisions to the extent that those decisions are based on misconceptions rather than reality.
In order to combat these misconceptions, the Obama administration has created a website so one can determine how one’s taxes are allocated to programs. The website can be found here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/taxreceipt
At the same time, people seem to believe that taxes are higher now than ever before. The reality is that tax rates are currently lower than they have been at any point since World War II. For some historical data, take a look at this page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States