What's a Trillion anyway?

Unidentified Congressmen seen arriving for budget talks..


While we're on the subject of budgets just how much is a Trillion anyway? Our government tosses that number around like it's "the new billion". It's hard to get your head around a number normally reserved for measuring distances between galaxies. Especially when used in the same sentence as "budget". To help visualize our government's profligate spending habits, imagine a giant spool of $100 bills, single file and end-to-end. Now make it $1 trillion long and attach it to a Blue Angel (spending I do support because it's so freakin' cool!). Now kick 'er up to Mach 1 and book it until you run out of cash. Check the video to get a feel for the speed.



Now you're peeling off C-notes at the speed of sound to the ooohs and aaahs of the crowd on a Saturday afternoon. Imagine that one of three lucky contestants who guesses closest to when the spool runs out gets to keep the cash. Who wins?
Person A, who thinks $100 is kind of a lot and that jet's going kinda fast says "10 minutes!"
Person B, (suspicious that that person A likely works in the congressional budget office) does some quick math and comes up with "Sometime next Thursday."
Person C, a faithful watcher of "The Price is Right" belts out "One minute more than next Thursday!"

The fact is you'd be cruising for a month and a half. You'd be streaming out Benjamins for 50 straight days. You'd circle the equator 38 times before your trillion ran out. Peeling off $100 bills for 120,479 consecutive flight hours at Mach 1. You math whizzes probably noticed person A guessed roughly 1 million and person B guessed about 1 billion. Our currrent Federal budget deficit is projected at over 1.46 trillion for this year, 1.6 trillion next year and "somewhere north of 1 trillion" the year after that.
Money we borrow from countries and investors the world over, with them thinking we'll pay it back..eventually. We also just flat-out print money when too many people want their money back at the same time...2.1 trillion and counting since 2007.

So what you say? Isn't that what printing presses were made for? Our leaders sure seem to think so. We must change that mindset, top to bottom, and here is why.

Yahoo Finance "The debt will keep growing"

Let's keep voting them out till we find someone who gets it and acts to change it... Representative Buchanan seems to be trying here. Not raising isn't the same as drastic cutting, but hey it's Congress. Baby steps..