Proposed 2010 Federal Budget

BO is making the rounds to gin up support for his first Federal Budget. He is asking for approximately 3.6 trillion dollars, that is $3,600,000,000,000. For round numbers, lets assume the new census will show America with 360,000,000 people. It will most likely be less than that. The budget would equal $10,000 per person in the country - that is every single man, woman and child. We have heard that almost half of the people do not pay any Federal taxes. That means that for someone who makes enough to owe income taxes, their share would be $20,000. Husband and wife together = $40,000 on the average, share of the spending proposed for just one year.

To get a perspective on how much money we are talking about, let's compare it with the one dollar bill. A dollar bill measures 6"x2.625"+-. That equals 1.3125 square feet per dollar bill. It would take 21,240,686 dollar bills to cover one square mile. One billion dollar bills will cover 47.08 square miles. One trillion dollar bills will cover 47,079 square miles. The number of dollar bills needed to pay the proposed budget will cover 169,486 square miles. That is equal to a square that is 411 miles times 411 miles.

So just how big is that: it is larger than Arizona (113,998 square miles)...it is even a little larger than California (163,696 square miles). It is the size of Washington and Oregon combined - 169,808 square miles.

If you took 3.6 trillion dollar bills and laid them end to end, you could go around the world, at the equator, over 13.6 times.

At 5% interest on the budget amount, the interest only would amount to $5,708 per second.

Now, aren't you glad BO promised to reign in wasteful spending! Oh, just a reminder, all of those bailouts and stimulus bills passed over the past year do not count as part of the budget. They add several more trillion dollars to the spending spree. Has all of this made you feel stimulated?

Remember: They were at war with us, but we were not at war with them!