A tax receipt at last?

It looks like the U.S. government may be well on its way toward
issuing each taxpayer an itemized receipt. As I've said before, this is a really good
idea.

A bipartisan bill to establish a tax receipt has been introduced in the House, following a similar
move last month in the Senate. Tennessee Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper offers a sample (pdf) of what the receipt would look
like.

I wish Cooper's receipt broke down more of the budget lines into
subcategories. It'd be good, for instance, for taxpayers to know how much of
their spending on ground transportation goes to highways, as opposed to
railroads and mass transit. (I'd also like a footnote pointing out that we
routinely spend our income taxes on highways even as conservatives repeat the
false line that gas taxes cover them, but that's probably too much to wish for
in a bipartisan proposal.)