Four Hundred Twenty Seven Thousand Million Reasons to Spend More Money

According to the White House , $427 Billion is the projected budget deficit for 2005.

Some of the other officers an I were discussing this information and decided it might be helpful to look at this number as something slightly more understandable to those of us without billions of dollars at our disposal.

$427 Billion is $427,000,000,000. Or - (now make sure you say this aloud) - Four Hundred Twenty Seven Thousand Million. A Million Dollars is a lot of money to most people who aren't employed by the government. And so is Four Hundred and Twenty Seven dollars for most of the people that live in one of those countries where you can sponsor kids for less than a cup of coffee per day.

Well, maybe a cup of coffee from dunkin donuts or the Speedway, not the half decaf sugar free vanilla fair trade wet cappuccino that you bought today while looking at strange perspective photographs of a life size stone oxen selling for $427. Without the frame.

Of course there is someone who figured out the math of stacking thousand dollar bills...and this would be helpful in illustrating the amazing size of the deficit, except that there are no thousand dollar bills. There are only hundreds. And if you stack one hundred dollar bills in the amount of the projected deficit, on very level and non-windy ground it will go about 337 miles up or well into the thermosphere - whatever that is. Also if we were to pay a million dollars a minute as a nation to get this deficit in line, we would be paying for 11 months. And be really pissed.

And of course the $427 Billion is only this years projected deficit. The total balance of the National Debt is over $7.6 Trillion. Or $7.6 Million Millions. Which is really a lot more money than the a lot of money we already illustrated above...I think that stack would go to very near the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Either way that's one big credit card statement. And I'm not sure what the minimum payment on a $7.6 trillion credit card bill would be...but I'm pretty sure we can negotiate with the creditors somehow.