Solutions to the government’s funding problems for health care and education were the focus of “U Slice the Pie,” a bus tour program presented by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities (BLSP) Friday afternoon.

“The candidates in the presidential election keep saying that education and health care is a key issue, but no one is giving us a plan on how to fund it,” said Dia Kanellos, communications director for Iowans for Sensible Priorities. “We’ve come up with this plan based on our military advisers of how we can divert money into both education and health care.”

With the bus tour, BLSP is attempting to educate people on government spending and to urge them to support the Priorities by signing a petition.

“Students aren’t as apathetic as people make them out to be,” said Erica Swanson, field staff member of Iowans for Sensible Priorities. “We are looking for students to head up programs, organize and also to sign the petition.”

The basic plan BLSP has come up with calls for cutting the Pentagon’s budget by 15 percent.

The discretionary portion of the federal budget allocates about $540 billion each year. From that account, the Pentagon receives $276 billion, and the remainder is divided among other areas of government including justice, education, health and agriculture, according to the presentation.

“According to senior military advisers, the U.S. can trim our Pentagon budget and still remain the strongest nation in the world,” said Eric Lee, who played “Uncle Sam” in the Priorities show. He said the United States spends 17 times more on military expenses than other comparable nations.

Swanson said Priorities is trying to find out political candidates’ spending goals and how they will accomplish them without raising taxes.

“Where is that money coming from?” Swanson said.

Jeremy Hayes, sophomore in pre-business, attended the show and said he learned a lot.

“It was something I never really thought about,” he said. “I wish more people would come so they could find out the same information — I think it is something a lot of people don’t realize.”

At the end of the show, each member of the audience was given 100 pennies and asked to appropriate that money among 11 categories.

The results showed Ames residents and Iowa State students would delegate tax money differently than the government currently does, with the greatest variance in Pentagon and education spending.

According to the penny experiment, the government spends 48.17 percent of the federal discretionary budget on the Pentagon and 6.24 percent on education, whereas local residents would spend 6.91 percent and 20.33 percent, respectively.