The $100,000,000 Cup of Coffee

What do $100,000,000, a Venti Latte and a pack of gum have in common?  Well, they all have about the same significance … depending on your perspective.

Recently President Obama announced that he had instructed his Cabinet to cut $100,000,000 from the Federal Budget … and True Believers fell in line to praise this display of fiscal responsibility.  But what, exactly, does a hundred million dollars really mean in the grand scheme of things?

The 2010 Federal Budget is a little over $3.5 trillion (tens of billions of dollars is “a little”, in this case), that’s $3,500,000,000,000 – which, in technical terms understood only by high-level money-managers, is sometimes referred to as “a shitload of money”.

Unfortunately, the 2010 federal income is projected to be only $2.4 trillion, leaving a deficit of a little over $1 trillion (“a little” is a hundred billion or so, in this case). 

Not to mention the federal debt, money we already owe, of over $11 trillion.  Keep in mind, as you listen to the talking heads, the difference between debt and deficit.  The debt is what we already owe, the deficit is how much more we’ll owe for that year.

Now a bit of perspective …

How much is $1,000,000,000,000?  You would have to spend $1,000 an hour, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year for … wait for it … 126,000 years in order to spend a single trillion.

How about some perspective on the whole mess?  Let’s put it in terms everyone can understand by making the comparison to a family, say a family of four where both the mom and dad work modest jobs and earn a total of $120,000 a year.  That’s not rich, that’s a firefighter and teacher raising a family.

So this family earns $120,000 a year, but they spend $177,500 a year … or almost $60,000 more than they make.  Every year.  Plus, they already owe $560,000, or almost five times their annual salary.

What would you think of such a family?  Would you think they were fiscally responsible, or complete morons who have no concept of money management?

Let’s go further in our example and say that this family sits down and goes over their finances and decides that they may be spending too much money, so they ponder and come up with a plan that cuts their spending by … wait for it … $5.  For the year.

That’s it … they owe half a million dollars, spend tens of thousands more than they earn each year, but they’re happy because they saved five bucks.

That $100,000,000 in spending cuts is the equivalent of the family’s $5 (do the math).  It’s meaningless … Obama, essentially, ordered the Executive Branch to skip a stop at Starbucks for one day. 

Was $120,000 a year too much income for you to relate to?  Let’s give an example right at the poverty line, a family of four earning only $21,600 a year.  That’s not a lot of money to raise a family on, in fact, it’d be almost impossible … but what would you think of that family if they actually spent $32,000 a year and already owed over $100,000?

And then they got excited and bragged because they’d cut their spending by ninety cents for the year?  Can you even buy a pack of gum for ninety cents?

Those two examples are simply taking the 2010 budget, deficit and the current national debt and dividing them enough to get the income down to understandable levels – by 20,000,000 and 110,000,000, respectively.

You should be disgusted with those two hypothetical families and you should be disgusted with the crew in Washington, because, unlike those families, Congress and the President are spending your money.  They’ve taken the American family and its income, which comes from all of us in taxes, and they’ve been as stupid and profligate as these examples.

Then they have the audacity to proudly proclaim that they cut their ridiculous budget by $100,000,000?  They skipped Starbucks for a day … they didn’t buy a pack of gum.  You should be pissed and you should write your Congressman and Senators and the President to tell them that you’re pissed:

http://www.house.gov
http://www.senate.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov

In addition to being pissed, you should be offended that anyone is suggesting those $100,000,000 in cuts are, in any way, significant … they’re trying to make you think skipping a day’s coffee is real change, and it isn’t.  Real change would be skipping Starbucks every day, not just once.

For real change, we need a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution and leaders in Washington who are willing to make the hard decisions necessary to stop the profligate waste and demand fiscal responsibility with their votes. 

Use the links above to send Washington a message about spending or sign The Bloviater’s free RallyCongress petition to send your Senators and Representative this message:

I am writing to you as a concerned citizen, taxpayer and voter.

The 2010 Federal Budget projects a deficit of over $1 trillion, an unsustainable level of spending and accumulation of debt.  While it took the United States until the 1980s, over two hundred years, to accumulate $1 trillion dollars in debt, we are now adding that amount every year.  Our children and grandchildren will not be able to pay the interest on this debt, much less the principle.

I urge you to take a stand and vote against deficit spending and against any proposed budget with a deficit.  In addition I urge you to support and encourage amending the Constitution to require that the Federal Budget be balanced and not allow the incursion of debt, except in time of national emergency.

If a family or company were in the same debt and spending pattern as the United States, it would have no choice but bankruptcy.  The time for fiscal responsibility is now, and we, the people, depend on our elected representatives to show leadership and make the hard, necessary decisions in these troubled times.  The necessary decision now is to stop spending money that the United States does not have and never will.

Sign the petition now and tell Washington that the American Family, like any other, must live within its means.