Trillions In Perspective

Annie

Diamond Member
Nov 22, 2003
50,848
4,827
1,790
I've seen the graphic representations, heard about a million a day since Christ was born, but this one works for me:

www.washingtonexaminer.com >> Politics >> - Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
05/12/09 10:23 AM EDT


(AP)
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it....

...Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding the Obama administration’s $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. People simply have trouble understanding a number so big. A recent poll asked Americans how many million are in a trillion. Twenty-one percent of respondents got the answer right — it’s a million million. Most people thought it was a lot less.

Republicans are facing that obstacle as they try to explain the dimensions of Obama’s spending plan. The GOP pollster told me he tries to explain it by asking people to think of a dollar as a second — one dollar, one brief tick of your watch. A million seconds, the pollster explained, equals eleven days. A billion seconds equals 31 years. And a trillion seconds equals 310 centuries.

The task of educating voters got a little more urgent Monday, when the government announced the not-terribly-surprising news that federal tax revenues will be smaller this year than previously thought. After a review of the Obama budget’s numbers before formal submission to Congress, Budget Director Peter Orszag said this year’s deficit will be $1.841 trillion — $89 billion more than previously estimated. If you’re listening to the ticks of your watch, that’s about 570 centuries.

You may remember last week that Obama proposed, with much fanfare, $17 billion in budget cuts. Now, his budget director announces that the deficit will go up by $89 billion. “A paperwork change increased the size of the deficit more than five times greater than the savings they proposed last week,” one key Republican Senate aide told me. The deficit will likely grow again in a few months when the budget office does a routine midyear review.

And it will grow bigger still if Obama’s remarkably optimistic predictions for the economy don’t pan out. On Monday the White House forecast that the economy will be growing at a 3.5 percent annual rate by the end of this year. That’s a nice growth rate in a non-recession year. But now? After the economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.1 percent in the first quarter? “They say we’re going to have almost a 10-point swing in the span of six months,” the GOP aide told me. “That’s a really rosy scenario.”...
 
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it....

The BIG TRUTH can be as difficult to get one's head around as the BIG LIE.

The BIG TRUTH, in this case, is that our government is spending (or guaranteeing to cover the toxic debts of banks) in amounts equal to something like the total GDP of the USA for a year.

So I have to agree with the above...that people are having difficulty getting their heads around numbers so enormous.

Remember, not so long ago, when a BILLION was THE big number?

Well now, the big number is a TRILLION.

This has really happened in just the last few years.

When I was a kid, the BIG NUMBER was million!

That means the BIG NUMBER, the number that impresses us, has grown from a $MILLION x a MILLION TIMES a $MILLION in just my ADULT lifetime.

Mind bogglingly large numbers like this become so abstract that they cease to really register.
 
Fear not, Obama is the Messiah after all. The brain dead democrats like Jillian and her buddies here will likely IGNORE this thread or claim it is just wrong.

Obama has PROMISED a miracle, what is everyone worried about? The democratic supporters have insisted trillions in deficit spending by Obama is fine cause, well he is spending it in the US. He has TRIPLED the Deficit but has promised to cut it in half in 4 years, assuming he does not INCREASE the deficit even more during the next 4 years his promise means that he will still have increased the deficit by 50 percent.

Of course how he can NOT keep deficit spending when he is adding programs that cost billions and will grow each year not shrink, is an interesting question. One the Democrats just ignore, along with the Press. And of course how in 4 years after massive deficit spending he will be able to cut HALF the Federal Budget or more when the programs will NEED MORE not less money is an interesting question as well.

Anyone that thinks MASSIVE tax increases are not just around the corner are fools indeed.
 
Fear not, Obama is the Messiah after all. The brain dead democrats like Jillian and her buddies here will likely IGNORE this thread or claim it is just wrong.

Obama has PROMISED a miracle, what is everyone worried about? The democratic supporters have insisted trillions in deficit spending by Obama is fine cause, well he is spending it in the US. He has TRIPLED the Deficit but has promised to cut it in half in 4 years, assuming he does not INCREASE the deficit even more during the next 4 years his promise means that he will still have increased the deficit by 50 percent.

Of course how he can NOT keep deficit spending when he is adding programs that cost billions and will grow each year not shrink, is an interesting question. One the Democrats just ignore, along with the Press. And of course how in 4 years after massive deficit spending he will be able to cut HALF the Federal Budget or more when the programs will NEED MORE not less money is an interesting question as well.

Anyone that thinks MASSIVE tax increases are not just around the corner are fools indeed.

And THAT statement is a truth that should scare the crap out of people.. the amount they will have to increase on a majority of Americans to even come close to paying for what this asshole (and the asshole congress) is proposing

But we know the uber-partisan obamabots like Chrissy, Bobo the assclown, and others will blindly follow like a newborn duckling
 
Consider....

If, as most of us believe, the trillions we are borrowing are REAL DEBT based on EXISTING MONEY, that means that somebody had that money to begin with.

Ponder that fact for a moment.

Now...where did they get it, exactly?
 
Consider....

If, as most of us believe, the trillions we are borrowing are REAL DEBT based on EXISTING MONEY, that means that somebody had that money to begin with.

Ponder that fact for a moment.

Now...where did they get it, exactly?

It is not real since money is not based on anything anymore. Everyone's economy and money supply is based on accounting procedures and guesses.
 
Consider....

If, as most of us believe, the trillions we are borrowing are REAL DEBT based on EXISTING MONEY, that means that somebody had that money to begin with.

Ponder that fact for a moment.

Now...where did they get it, exactly?

I don't think 'most of believe' it's existing money:

The Stress Test Placebo | Green Business | Reuters

...Until now, we have been inundated with an alphabet soup of programs to save the economy. But the purpose of each and their success rates have been murky. Even experts can't keep track of what's going on: In response to a query about a Treasury program, a spokesman told me that he couldn't recall what it was, yet alone its purpose. In recent testimony, the inspector general at the Federal Reserve couldn't explain the whereabouts of trillions of dollars in central-bank money used to alleviate stress at troubled banks; she certainly couldn't comment on the efficacy of the programs. In a hilarious interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, TARP oversight queen Elizabeth Warren momentarily forgot what the acronym PPIP stands for. No wonder taxpayers are upset and confused....
 
I've seen the graphic representations, heard about a million a day since Christ was born, but this one works for me:

www.washingtonexaminer.com >> Politics >> - Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
05/12/09 10:23 AM EDT


(AP)
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it....

...Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding the Obama administration’s $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. People simply have trouble understanding a number so big. A recent poll asked Americans how many million are in a trillion. Twenty-one percent of respondents got the answer right — it’s a million million. Most people thought it was a lot less.

Republicans are facing that obstacle as they try to explain the dimensions of Obama’s spending plan. The GOP pollster told me he tries to explain it by asking people to think of a dollar as a second — one dollar, one brief tick of your watch. A million seconds, the pollster explained, equals eleven days. A billion seconds equals 31 years. And a trillion seconds equals 310 centuries.

The task of educating voters got a little more urgent Monday, when the government announced the not-terribly-surprising news that federal tax revenues will be smaller this year than previously thought. After a review of the Obama budget’s numbers before formal submission to Congress, Budget Director Peter Orszag said this year’s deficit will be $1.841 trillion — $89 billion more than previously estimated. If you’re listening to the ticks of your watch, that’s about 570 centuries.

You may remember last week that Obama proposed, with much fanfare, $17 billion in budget cuts. Now, his budget director announces that the deficit will go up by $89 billion. “A paperwork change increased the size of the deficit more than five times greater than the savings they proposed last week,” one key Republican Senate aide told me. The deficit will likely grow again in a few months when the budget office does a routine midyear review.

And it will grow bigger still if Obama’s remarkably optimistic predictions for the economy don’t pan out. On Monday the White House forecast that the economy will be growing at a 3.5 percent annual rate by the end of this year. That’s a nice growth rate in a non-recession year. But now? After the economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.1 percent in the first quarter? “They say we’re going to have almost a 10-point swing in the span of six months,” the GOP aide told me. “That’s a really rosy scenario.”...

Good post.

Too bad folks from the conservative side weren't posting these kinds of articles in 2001, when Bush and the Republicans passed tax cuts and wiped out the small surplus he had intereted.

We wouldn't have the same concern today during a recessionif Bush had used that surplus and paid down the debt instead of growing it by $5 trillion.
 
Last edited:
Fear not, Obama is the Messiah after all. The brain dead democrats like Jillian and her buddies here will likely IGNORE this thread or claim it is just wrong.

Obama has PROMISED a miracle, what is everyone worried about? The democratic supporters have insisted trillions in deficit spending by Obama is fine cause, well he is spending it in the US. He has TRIPLED the Deficit but has promised to cut it in half in 4 years, assuming he does not INCREASE the deficit even more during the next 4 years his promise means that he will still have increased the deficit by 50 percent.

Of course how he can NOT keep deficit spending when he is adding programs that cost billions and will grow each year not shrink, is an interesting question. One the Democrats just ignore, along with the Press. And of course how in 4 years after massive deficit spending he will be able to cut HALF the Federal Budget or more when the programs will NEED MORE not less money is an interesting question as well.

Anyone that thinks MASSIVE tax increases are not just around the corner are fools indeed.

Well, we will see if President Obama can deliver.

But let's put this in perspective. Bush started with a budget surplus, and a mild recession. He ended with a budget hundreds of billion in the red. And a major recession rapidly sliding into a depression. And two failed wars, one of them based on lies.

Obama starts where Bush left off. Two failed wars to take care of, and the Second Great Republican Depression hanging over our heads. So President Obama is doing what he considers neccessary to save our economy.

Will it work? Time will tell. If it does, President Obama will be a two term President for certain. If it does not, he will not, and the next President will have a full fledged Depression to deal with. Either way, you Conservatives are going to have some real problems in the near future.
 
Bush started with a 'budget surplus' but with a total spending deficit... please don't forget intergovernmental spending/borrowing DOES count

We'll see if Obama can deliver?? Are you serious??? Would you advise your kids or your business to spend it's way out of deficit/debt? Hey son, you owe $10000 and you were $2000 in the red last year. Let's increase spending even more, hand out money to bums on the street at will, and go $5000 in the red on your spending this year. THAT should help you out of this financial mess!! :rolleyes:
 
Bush started with a 'budget surplus' but with a total spending deficit... please don't forget intergovernmental spending/borrowing DOES count

We'll see if Obama can deliver?? Are you serious??? Would you advise your kids or your business to spend it's way out of deficit/debt? Hey son, you owe $10000 and you were $2000 in the red last year. Let's increase spending even more, hand out money to bums on the street at will, and go $5000 in the red on your spending this year. THAT should help you out of this financial mess!! :rolleyes:

That is not what Obama is trying to do. He is trying to save the economy. If you are in debt, and your car breaks down, you might have to spend money to have it repaired so you can continue to drive to your work. If you do not spend this money, in light of your debt, you could lose your job and any ability to pay off the debt in the future.
 
Bush started with a 'budget surplus' but with a total spending deficit... please don't forget intergovernmental spending/borrowing DOES count

We'll see if Obama can deliver?? Are you serious??? Would you advise your kids or your business to spend it's way out of deficit/debt? Hey son, you owe $10000 and you were $2000 in the red last year. Let's increase spending even more, hand out money to bums on the street at will, and go $5000 in the red on your spending this year. THAT should help you out of this financial mess!! :rolleyes:

That is not what Obama is trying to do. He is trying to save the economy. If you are in debt, and your car breaks down, you might have to spend money to have it repaired so you can continue to drive to your work. If you do not spend this money, in light of your debt, you could lose your job and any ability to pay off the debt in the future.


No it is not...

It is more like (in the car situation) realizing you are in debt, and you car is broke, and thinking that spending on the car, a new pool, new paint for the car, a vacation, a new laptop, season tickets to the Orioles, and entry fee into the World Series of Poker, is the answer

The thing is ridiculous, pet projects, pork, additional unnecessary spending, etc.. it's a farce
 
I've seen the graphic representations, heard about a million a day since Christ was born, but this one works for me:

www.washingtonexaminer.com >> Politics >> - Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
05/12/09 10:23 AM EDT


(AP)
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it....

...Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding the Obama administration’s $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. People simply have trouble understanding a number so big. A recent poll asked Americans how many million are in a trillion. Twenty-one percent of respondents got the answer right — it’s a million million. Most people thought it was a lot less.

Republicans are facing that obstacle as they try to explain the dimensions of Obama’s spending plan. The GOP pollster told me he tries to explain it by asking people to think of a dollar as a second — one dollar, one brief tick of your watch. A million seconds, the pollster explained, equals eleven days. A billion seconds equals 31 years. And a trillion seconds equals 310 centuries.

The task of educating voters got a little more urgent Monday, when the government announced the not-terribly-surprising news that federal tax revenues will be smaller this year than previously thought. After a review of the Obama budget’s numbers before formal submission to Congress, Budget Director Peter Orszag said this year’s deficit will be $1.841 trillion — $89 billion more than previously estimated. If you’re listening to the ticks of your watch, that’s about 570 centuries.

You may remember last week that Obama proposed, with much fanfare, $17 billion in budget cuts. Now, his budget director announces that the deficit will go up by $89 billion. “A paperwork change increased the size of the deficit more than five times greater than the savings they proposed last week,” one key Republican Senate aide told me. The deficit will likely grow again in a few months when the budget office does a routine midyear review.

And it will grow bigger still if Obama’s remarkably optimistic predictions for the economy don’t pan out. On Monday the White House forecast that the economy will be growing at a 3.5 percent annual rate by the end of this year. That’s a nice growth rate in a non-recession year. But now? After the economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.1 percent in the first quarter? “They say we’re going to have almost a 10-point swing in the span of six months,” the GOP aide told me. “That’s a really rosy scenario.”...

Good post.

Too bad folks from the conservative side weren't posting these kinds of articles in 2001, when Bush and the Republicans passed tax cuts and wiped out the small surplus he had intereted.

We wouldn't have the same concern today during a recessionif Bush had used that surplus and paid down the debt instead of growing it by $5 trillion.

That's not a true statement Immie. Plenty of us conservatives were calling out the government for it's over spending. It was bad then, and it's worse now, so we are shouting louder now, that's all.
 
I've seen the graphic representations, heard about a million a day since Christ was born, but this one works for me:

www.washingtonexaminer.com >> Politics >> - Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

Good post.

Too bad folks from the conservative side weren't posting these kinds of articles in 2001, when Bush and the Republicans passed tax cuts and wiped out the small surplus he had intereted.

We wouldn't have the same concern today during a recessionif Bush had used that surplus and paid down the debt instead of growing it by $5 trillion.

That's not a true statement Immie. Plenty of us conservatives were calling out the government for it's over spending. It was bad then, and it's worse now, so we are shouting louder now, that's all.

I think you confused me with Immie.

I agree my statement was a generalization. But I don't recall many on the conservative side complaining about the Bush tax cuts because they weren't being matched with spending cuts. Ironically McCain was one of the few I recall objective. There were some, but a pretty small minority.
 
No it is not...

It is more like (in the car situation) realizing you are in debt, and you car is broke, and thinking that spending on the car, a new pool, new paint for the car, a vacation, a new laptop, season tickets to the Orioles, and entry fee into the World Series of Poker, is the answer

The thing is ridiculous, pet projects, pork, additional unnecessary spending, etc.. it's a farce

Then argue against unnecessary spending, don't create a straw man that the purpose of the spending is to reduce the debt. It's easy to argue against that because it's not a position that anyone is taking.
 
Good post.

Too bad folks from the conservative side weren't posting these kinds of articles in 2001, when Bush and the Republicans passed tax cuts and wiped out the small surplus he had intereted.

We wouldn't have the same concern today during a recessionif Bush had used that surplus and paid down the debt instead of growing it by $5 trillion.

That's not a true statement Immie. Plenty of us conservatives were calling out the government for it's over spending. It was bad then, and it's worse now, so we are shouting louder now, that's all.

I think you confused me with Immie.

I agree my statement was a generalization. But I don't recall many on the conservative side complaining about the Bush tax cuts because they weren't being matched with spending cuts. Ironically McCain was one of the few I recall objective. There were some, but a pretty small minority.

Sorry, didn't mean to mix up your name.
I've only been on this board since December, so you won't find posts from me talking about it here, but I damn sure was talking about it at other places.
 
That's not a true statement Immie. Plenty of us conservatives were calling out the government for it's over spending. It was bad then, and it's worse now, so we are shouting louder now, that's all.

I think you confused me with Immie.

I agree my statement was a generalization. But I don't recall many on the conservative side complaining about the Bush tax cuts because they weren't being matched with spending cuts. Ironically McCain was one of the few I recall objective. There were some, but a pretty small minority.

Sorry, didn't mean to mix up your name.
I've only been on this board since December, so you won't find posts from me talking about it here, but I damn sure was talking about it at other places.

Yes some were, I don't doubt you.

But the thing for Bush was not that he was going to need to cut spending, because he was selling the old "supply side" scheme. Cut taxes and revenues somehow grow faster. So he didn't need to talk about cutting spending, because the Govt was going to have so much more revenues. In fact I hardly recall Bush talking about cutting anything at all ever. And a lot of conservatives where pitching that idea too. It didn't work out as sold, though. Revenues tanked after the tax cuts.
 
Last edited:
I think you confused me with Immie.

I agree my statement was a generalization. But I don't recall many on the conservative side complaining about the Bush tax cuts because they weren't being matched with spending cuts. Ironically McCain was one of the few I recall objective. There were some, but a pretty small minority.

Sorry, didn't mean to mix up your name.
I've only been on this board since December, so you won't find posts from me talking about it here, but I damn sure was talking about it at other places.

Yes some were, I don't doubt you.

But the thing for Bush was not that he was going to need to cut spending, because he was selling the old "supply side" scheme. Cut taxes and revenues somehow grow faster. So he didn't need to talk about cutting spending, because the Govt was going to have so much more revenues. In fact I hardly recall Bush talking about cutting anything at all ever. And a lot of conservatives where pitching that idea too. It didn't work out as sold, though. Revenues tanked after the tax cuts.

Good thing. Bush was gone last Nov. Really out in Jan, after giving the balance of a trillion to Obama, at Obama's request. How quaint. Now it's Obama's to deal with, rather ours, regardless of party. Have you read Moody's today? Seems our creditors are going to downgrade our credit rating. Why? Hmmm?
 
Sorry, didn't mean to mix up your name.
I've only been on this board since December, so you won't find posts from me talking about it here, but I damn sure was talking about it at other places.

Yes some were, I don't doubt you.

But the thing for Bush was not that he was going to need to cut spending, because he was selling the old "supply side" scheme. Cut taxes and revenues somehow grow faster. So he didn't need to talk about cutting spending, because the Govt was going to have so much more revenues. In fact I hardly recall Bush talking about cutting anything at all ever. And a lot of conservatives where pitching that idea too. It didn't work out as sold, though. Revenues tanked after the tax cuts.

Good thing. Bush was gone last Nov. Really out in Jan, after giving the balance of a trillion to Obama, at Obama's request. How quaint. Now it's Obama's to deal with, rather ours, regardless of party. Have you read Moody's today? Seems our creditors are going to downgrade our credit rating. Why? Hmmm?

The Govt is $11 trillion in debt and in the midst of a recession, be my guess.

This guy said it right:

"For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" Ronald Reagan, 1981.

Phrases that defined a career - The Legacy of Ronald Reagan- msnbc.com

Unfortunately, starting with him, and with the exception of the late 90s, the Govt embarked on just the course that Reagan warned us about. We traded fiscal resonsibility for lower taxes and military buildups and unnecessary wars we couldn't afford, without cutting spending in other areas. We elected politicians that pandered they could cut our taxes with no consequences. We put into office politicians that told us "deficits don't matter." We, the pass the buck generation, lapped it up.

Now we find ourselves in the middle of a very nasty recession when we need to run a deficit, but find ourselves already in debt to the hilt because of past transgressions.

Reagan was right. We should have listened to him. Instead, we did as he did. And now its coming to roost, and it will burden our nation for a generation or more.

Hopefully once we get out of the immediate crisis, Obama will raise taxes and cut spending and put the nation back into a surplus like in 2000, when the Govt was starting to pay down the debt.

But I'm not very optimistic.
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top