They should prioritize spending by statistical likelihood of it impacting real people. So what that would mean is lots more money to find solutions that address big threats to lots of people, like eliminating as many pollutants as possible, finding causes of cancers, getting dangerous chemicals out of products, improving the quality of drinking water and finding better forms of power generation, and investing more money in resources that promote lifelong learning, eliminating various financial frauds and white collar crime, also making it possible for people to have more financial and job security, more public transportation, better roads and improving the quality of life. It should be legal to spend that miney here in the US creating jobs for Americans, we shouldn't be forced to outsource or offshore that spending if another nations corporations paid their workers just two or three dollars a day, they should not get the work simply because they are cheaper. Instead tax money
should be able to create green jobs for unemployed Americans. Now that is FTA-illegal! The US
should not have brought the
suit in the WTO against India's homegrown solar energy program, that we won, two years ago, that made it clear helping your own nationals get jobs with your own tax money, was prohibited behavior. (Unless its a secret type program, then it seems it may be clear that a national security exemption applies) Otherwise, it may be up for grabs and because of high minimum wages in developed countries the work is likely to go elsewhere. Maybe this is why we see so little infrastructure spending?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have a military but resorting to the military should be a last resort, when diplomacy has failed, and a real emergency looms. It also should be there in emergencies, that should be one of its primary uses, helping save lives in extreme, emergency situations. For example, in huge storms, earthquakes, etc. they should be able to help.
We should never be working behind the scenes to further goals that are contradictory to the public interest or to the values we stand for. That should be forbidden in the Constitution and any deals struck that cancel out the benefits of our democracy should automatically be void in advance. This would mean that trade agreement provisions which cancel out gains made in banking and health care regulation, that currently threaten to erase literally all the gains made in the last 21 years would not be hanging over us. So called "ratchet" "standstill" and "rollback" caused by WTO provisions would be eliminated.
This would mean that as it was in the past, corporations and foreign investors
would be encouraged to buy commercial "all risk" insurance to indemnify them instead of being able to sanction our government for behaving responsibly by putting the peoples needs above multinational corporations.
No protests could be lodged by other countries simply because a law changed policy in any way unless it caused a crime against people's lives. It would be recognized again that governments function was to govern, in a balanced manner, not simply guard the interests of MNCs.
ISDS and similar trojan horse clauses and torts like 'indirect expropriation' should cease to exist. When candidates run for office, they should actually be able to make promises that could be implemented. If they promise that XYZ would happen or would not happen it would not be a joke on the nation that could never come true.
Then we could fix innumerable things that cannot be fixed today because of hidden constraints that virtually nobody knows exist.
Similarly we shouldn't be able to force bad policy changes on other nations. We should respect other nation's voters wishes as well as respect our own. This would be a big change as that has not been the case for more than two decades.
If we did these things, there would be no need for huge dramatic distractions as people could read budgets secure in the knowledge that what was said was actually what was meant, and not trying to ascertain what was happening behind the smoke and mirrors.