Three Point One Terabucks
$3,100,000,000,000
Now we are definitely talking unreal money. Not even Exxon or Bill Gates gets beyond Gigabucks. This is obscene.
Distributor Cap NY covers the lowlights on this latest example of budgeting with kazoo, pig’s bladder, and rubber chicken. [It needs more cow bell.]
He notes that despite the Army being involved in two ground wars, it is getting the same share of the budget as the other major branches. Insanity doesn’t begin to cover that kind of thinking. [Note that my Dad retired from the Air Force, and it was my service, so I’m biased towards air power, but this is otherworldly.]
Krugman noted earlier that the Wall Street Journal is of the opinion that the defense budget needs increasing, although it is not clear why $510 gigabucks isn’t an absurdity as it equals the military budgets of the rest of the world combined.
This budget isn’t all runaway spending. No, indeed, Mary Beth reports he is cutting the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget by $100 megabucks, and cutting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s budget by more than half to save another $200 megabucks. He is also trimming Medicare reimbursements, because hospitals need to “live within their means”.
Of course, there’s not much he can do about the interest on the debt, which is in the $360 gigabuck range, so he has to con people into buying another $410 gigabucks worth of IOUs. Fortunately he doesn’t have to ask working people to borrow the approximately $250 gigabucks they have been paying in for their future retirement or someone might notice that his actual deficits for 8 years are about $2 terabucks higher than he is required to admit under the Enron accounting program in effect.
[I apologize for slipping into the mega [million], giga [billion], tera [trillion] thing, but when numbers get this big, computer terms are the only way I can conceptualize them, the only tie I have to this much of anything. Everything I have ever earned is less that a rounding error in this budget.]
9 comments
O/T, but still on the subject of bucks normal humans don’t have ….
Have you ever explored the Aid & Attendance program for your Mother? I’ve only just now been made aware of it, and thought I’d see if my mother could qualify for any benefits. May not be much, but ever mini-buck helps.
I’m aware of the program and know of people locally who get it, friends of my Mother’s. My Mother doesn’t need it yet, but she knows it is out there. A service officer with the DAV would probably be able to give you the information, and based on your Dad’s retirement date I would assume that it is available to your Mother. It would pay for some things that aren’t covered by the Medicare/TriCare system. It only costs your time to apply, and your Dad earned with his service.
if you’d translated it into milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, i could follow along, but i can never quite keep those others straight [although i’ve always wondered what comes after peta].
“[although i’ve always wondered what comes after peta]” – hipparchia
Often enough, an arrest for messing around with laboratory animals…
That figure is breathtaking, no matter what notation one uses. andante has more on how Bush plans to stiff some Medicare recipients to pay for his expansion of defense expenditures… huge even excluding Afghanistan and Iraq.
So how expensive is a 3.1 terabuck war in human terms again?
(again O/T – sorry)
Thanks, Bryan. There is a service officer located in our county seat/courthouse complex and I’ve been given his phone #. I understand a lot can be done by phone, which is what I have to stick with as far as errands go. I’m not sure what, if anything, she would qualify for but as I said, every buck….
And Dad would be pleased.
Michael, we have spent about $100 kilobucks per Iraqi [pre-war population] to trash their country and Congress is having a hissy over giving poor people a few hundred to stave off a recession.
Medicare, WIC, and just about every other program that might help the less fortunate is getting cut while the defense industry profits soar. It is a true obscenity, although it is obviously DOA in Congress.
America has to many zeros.
Yes, Frederick, and they vote with some of them getting elected to office.