Spending Accelerates with Budget Deficit at $1.4 Trillion
A billion dollars just isn’t a very trendy term anymore.
The new norm for today’s spending barometer is measuring the deficit in trillions, not billions. After all, in todays day and age of extreme sports and general sensationalism, isn’t a trillion dollars a much bigger shock factor?
Lost to most is the fact that they are absolutely numbed to the reality of what even a billion dollars entails. I have to admit that the term billion had lost much meaning to me as well, until this weekend while watching football. The Cowboys were on TV, and they were showing a special on the Cowboy’s new stadium, which boasts the largest television screen and scoreboard on earth, and is home to so many luxuries, it seems more at home in the pre-debt collapse country of Dubai.
So what was the price tag for the Cowboys new ultra modern home? The answer to that question is that it cost 1.1 billion dollars to buy the land and build the stadium with the most extravagant amenities in the world. So what is my point in this example?
You could buy 1400 Cowboys stadiums each year with the amount of the deficit
My point is that you could build nearly 1400 Cowboys stadiums each year with the equivalent of the current federal deficit. When you take this number and divide it by the 50, you quickly figure out that you could build 28 Cowboy domes in each and every state in the union. Now that puts things in perspective fairly quickly, but don’t forget that the 1.4 Trillion dollars is above and beyond the 3 trillion or so that is already in the budget. Now that my friends, is an example of government waste.
All of this data makes the following headline in today’s news just that much harder to stomach.
Today Congress approved an additional $290 Billion to get us through the next 6 weeks
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation giving the federal government the ability to borrow a whopping $290 billion to finance its operations for just six additional weeks.
The 218-214 vote sends the must-pass bill to the Senate, which is expected to approve it as its last act before adjourning for the year. The alternative would be a market-rattling, first-ever default on U.S. obligations.
The measure is needed as a result of the out-of-control budget deficit, which registered $1.4 trillion for the budget year that ended in September. The current debt ceiling is $12.1 trillion and is set to be reached by Dec. 31.
Democrats had hoped to pass a far larger increase of almost $2 trillion to avoid another vote before next year’s midterm elections — and to wrap the increase into the popular defense appropriations bill to give some political cover.
Oh, how I wish that I billion dollars by itself was still shocking.
This sort of sounds like an alcoholic saying he will no longer drink as he brings a case of beer home from work.
the idea that Mr. Clinton could be dead of natural causes before Mr. Carter is a knockout
I usually don’t usually post on many another Blogs, still I just has to say thank you… keep up the amazing work. Ok regrettably its time to get to school.