If a politician in Washington, D.C. asked you how to spend $1.5 billion, what would you recommend? Keep in mind, it’s taxpayer money, so you can’t use it to fly you and your sweetie to Paris for a special Valentine’s Day weekend or on an all-inclusive stay at a resort in the Bahamas to work on your winter tan. It needs to be spent (or saved) in the public interest.

Perhaps you’d use the money to pay down the budget deficit…

Build or repair the roads and bridges in your state…

Fund a food program for children in America who go hungry each night…

Send the money back to the states to pay for education…

Some folks think they have the answer on how to spend those dollars.  For example, Center for Science in the Public Interest Executive Director Michael Jacobson, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology, just wrote an article proposing to spend a whopping $1.5 billion on “major mass-media campaigns to encourage people to eat less junk food and more healthful foods.” He also likes the idea of spending your money on cooking classes and bike trails (never mind that pothole you hit on the way to work today).

One and a half billion dollars is a lot of money to spend on a belief that people can’t possibly be capable of making decisions for what they eat – that they need the government to help them figure it out.

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reports that only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. So, do you trust them to make decisions about what you can and can’t eat?

There are many problems facing our country today. Obesity and proper health are problems we face as a nation. But we can make decisions for ourselves and our families each and every day without the help of lawmakers. What we can’t do without is their help is fill the pothole on the way to work, fund the music program at our local school or make a dent in the federal deficit. Priorities matter.