Back in late June, AmericaSpeaks held town forums about the budget across the U.S.  One of them was in Louisville. People from across the state were invited and encouraged to come.

The reports from these meetings were released this week, and it turns out Kentuckians have some pretty clear ideas about what kind of nation we need, and how we can get there.

Some of the highlights from the Kentucky participants:

• Most Kentucky participants – 67% – support government action to strengthen the economy.
• Most Kentucky participants – 54% – support the recent legislation to extend unemployment benefits and offer aid to states who've been bludgeoned by the recession.
• Most Kentucky participants – 58% – support raising taxes on people who earn more than $1 million a year.
• Nearly half of Kentucky participants support raising the top corporate income tax rate by 5%.
• A whopping 61% of Kentucky participants support a carbon tax.  How about that one?
  

These numbers are telling us that Kentuckians are interested in solutions that prioritize fairness and making our communities healthy and whole. Yes, we want our leaders to be fiscally responsible.  But we also want them to do the work of finding the money that we need, and finding it in a way that's equitable and fair, to invest in creating the communities that we want to live in.

If you'd like to learn more about the AmericaSpeaks town hall discussions, or about the results from Kentucky or across the nation, go to: http://usabudgetdiscussion.org/