What Can $260 Billion Get You?
Due to unconstitutional spending for decades, liberals who created this mess and the rest of us have to live with a $260 billion dollar line item in the federal budget. At least that is what it was in 2009. That $260 billion is the amount of interest we as a nation are paying this year to cover all the spending that that government engaged in but did not have the money to afford.
What could the federal government do with that extra $260 billion if it wasn’t having to pay for past transgressions? Well let’s have a look. Please note that the mention of any federal programs already in existence OR other particular spending in the following list is not necessarily an endorsement of them by myself. They are just for comparative purposes.
For that $260 billion we could:
- Fund the current obligations of Medicaid and SCHIP with $36 billion to spare (based on 2009).
- Fully fund the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Agriculture as well as the Executive Office of the President and the Small Business Administration with $1.3 billion to spare (based on 2009).
- Provide a check in the amount of $838.70 to every man woman and child currently living in the United States (assuming 310 million residents) every year. For a family of four this would total of $3,354.80!
- Buy 10,329,758 Americans brand new Ford Tauruses ($25,170/ea).
- Buy homes (average value of $175,000) for over 1.7 million families.
- Buy a flat screen television with an average cost $800 for every man, woman and child in America with money to spare.
- Just about buy all the goods created and services offered within the nation of Romania. (As of 2009 Romania’s GDP was just over $261.5 billion)
- Book every hotel room in Las Vegas (124,270) http://govegas.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://avantguide.com/lasvegas/index.php for the next 38+ years (assuming average nightly cost of $150/room)
- Buy every Major League Baseball Team and still have $248.7 billion left over (based on 2006 values) to start buying up all other major sports leagues in America easily.
- Buy free gasoline for every American for the first 326 days of every year (based on approx. 290 million gallons of gas consumed by US drivers per day and an average cost of $2.75 per gallon).
- 260 billion lottery scratch off tickets for people that think playing the lottery is a sound investment strategy after years of not taking the concept of saving for their own retirement seriously.
- 800 Air Force Ones (based on total delivery cost of 2 such planes in 1990 @ $650 million – I’m sure if we order 800 we can get a nice discount back to 1990 prices).
- Convert it all to dollar bills (0.0043 inches thick) and stack them on top of each other to make a stack 93,166,666 ft (17,645 miles) high.
- Convert it all to pennies (0.061 inches thick) and stack them on top of each other to make a stack 132,166,666,667 ft (25,031,515 miles) high. That is high enough to reach the moon (average distance from Earth of 238,857 miles) over four times!
- Buy 32,540,675,844 copies of President Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope” (currently $7.99 at Amazon in paperback and currently with FREE shipping for orders over $25). Why? Hey, when the world goes to pot you’ll have some something that burns easily to keep warm with!
- Construct five border fences along the U.S. Mexico border (one is estimated at about $49 billion)
- Build a huge vault and fill it with gold, gems and currency to swim around in like Scrooge McDuck.
Hopefully I got my math right on all these. I did double check the numbers but it doesn’t mean that I didn’t botch one or two. Anyway, you get the point! It is a lot of money we are wasting every year to pay for the failed schemes and promises of the left!
Loading ...