politicians and the word "Billion"

[Neil D]

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion"

casually, think about whether you want that politician

spending your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,

but one advertising agency did a good job of

putting that figure into perspective in one of its releases:

A billion seconds ago, it was 1959.

A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive.

A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the

Stone Age.

A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes ago,

at the rate Washington spends it.

Enjoy this day!

[Dr. Shane]

We need fiscal conservatives in Washington. Both political parties have such conservatives in their ranks but they do not have high, influencial positions. This issue will make Newt Gingrich look more attractive if he decides to run for President in 2008. Working with President Clinton, he was responsible for curbing government spending during strong economic growth which resulted in a balanced budget. And he is considering a run for the presidency.

[Neil D]

Hmmm.... a bit of caluculating shows some erroneous data...

For example, a billion seconds ago, was 1973.

A billion minutes ago, was the year 102. [We didn't calculate for leap years...]

A billion hours ago, shows us to be in the year 112,150 BC [along with a few months]

Here are the figure for the ESTIMATED 2005 budget by the Office of managment. I'll let you figure how much ONE billion dollars will last .....

Discressionary budget - 15,685

Mandatory Outlays:

Existing law 1,822

Tax Expenditures:

Existing law 85,970

Total 103477

[And this figure is in millions of dollars per year]

Take this figure [103477] and divide it by 365, and you have the cost per day [ 283.498], the cost per hour [11.8124] and the cost per minute [ 0.1986]