We Spent $352 Billion In FY05 And It Bought Us NOTHING

The Right may be on the wrong side of History but their strategy to turn back the clock is as patient as it is brilliant. But it's also immoral if not downright criminal. The $352 BILLION the federal government pissed away in FY05 on a single line item which bought We The People NOTHING proves it. That amounts to about $1200 per person.

For the past 3 decades the Right has been engaged in a number of strategic offensives. The each key element of their strategy serves two purposes... building up the Right while diminishing the Democrats.

One offensive is to defund the Democratic Party. The Right intends to accomplish this though free trade which will undermine labor unions. Another is though tort "reform" which is designed to undercut trial lawyers. Last by attacking public schools which are heavily unionized. All these groups are big contributors to the Democratic Party. These policies have the added benefit of serving the needs of corporations, capital, and social conservatives.

Another offensive is to hijack the federal judiciary by installing radical right-wing judges. The intent here is to challenge the legal basis for the social safety net and as a political pay-back for the social conservatives who are determined to use government to impose their notions of morality on the nation.

The last is to "starve the beast". During the 2000 campaign Bush promised to strengthen Social Security by protecting the surplus and paying down debt. In reality his real intent was to continue the Right's offensive to sabotage government revenues though grossly irresponsible tax cuts. After all, it costs the Right nothing to steal money from future taxpayers to buy votes today anymore than it does to craft bills that benefit special interests. Again, such policies serve a dual purpose. They bring home bacon to the GOP's wealthy and business constituencies while depriving the Democrats of funds for programs that benefit their constituencies. Tom DeLay wanted to go further with the K Street Project and make government kick-backs to GOP donors a quid pro quo. Just look at the goodies written into the Medicare Drug bill for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The payback was so juicy the true cost of this bill had to be hidden from Congress.

Why do I consider the Right's intent and their policies criminal? Because the GOP has chosen to use fiscal irresponsibility as a political weapon. Since Reagan, the radical right of GOP has been determined to sabotage government finances by creating massive deficits thus more debt. To this end they would prefer to piss away TRILLIONS on interest, some $352 BILLION in FY05 alone, rather than ever see that money spent to help the American People. Given the Right's true intent, it's no surprise Bush was determined to sabotage revenues just when Clinton reached a surplus... and before any debt was paid down.

Interest on the debt is without a doubt the biggest waste of public money in the federal budget. Yet despite the shocking size of this budget item, no Party raises this as a political issue no doubt fearing its potential volatility. Generally both parties prefer to gloss over the complexities of what's on and off budget... as well as the budget numbers themselves, leaving everything abstract. To do otherwise might expose the Right's Big Lie that all waste is to be found in puny programs like Public Broadcasting or the National Endowment For The Arts. Not that the Democrats are much better. Kerry's 04 deficit reduction plan hid a trillion in trust fund borrowing over 5 years.

For budget issues such as interest on the debt to become a potent political issue these immense numbers have to be made less abstract. I can envision two ways to do this. First is to compare that $352 Billion to the budgets of some well known agencies. For instance in FY05 the entire NASA budget was $16.244 Billion. The entire FY05 budget for National Institute of Health (NIH) was $28.8 billion. Combined this amounted to only 12.8% of the money wasted away on interest.

There's another way to bring the message home... though simple images. I have to thank http://www.crunchweb.net/87billion/ for the inspiration behind this exercise.

There's an old expression that a billion here and a billion there and soon you're talking REAL money. So just how big a pile of cash is $352 billion?

Using a micrometer I found a dollar bill is between .0044" and .0050" thick a differential no doubt cause by the high pressure intaglio printing process. I used the average of .0047".

A dollar bill is 6.125" x 2.625" x .0047" slightly different from the numbers used at Crunchweb. That means...

$1.00 bill = .0755671 cubic inches.

$22867.09 can fit in a cubic foot... at least mathematically.

$1 Billion....... 1000000000 / 22867.09 = 43,730.968 cubic feet of cash.

FY05 interest on the debt was 352.350,252,507 Billion.
(source = http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm)

352.350,252,507 Billion = 15408617.6 cubic feet of cash.

Taxpayer money wasted on FY05 interest would cover a baseball diamond (90' x 90') to a height of 1920'. The World Trade Center Towers were "only" 1368' tall.

Taxpayer money wasted on FY05 interest would cover a basketball court (94' x 50') to a height of 3278.4'

Taxpayer money wasted on FY05 interest would cover an entire NCAA football field (including end zones and sidelines... 160' x 360') to a height of 267.5'

But the interest on the debt is merely a sideshow in the GOP's criminal sabotaging of government finances. What about the debt Bush has run up?

According to http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov on January 20th 2001 when GW Bush took office the national debt was $5,727,776,738,304.64. As of January 26th 2006 the national debt was $8,190,567,748,779.48

In five years George Bush raised the national debt by $2,462,791,010,474.84. That's $2463 BILLION.... an average of about $492.5 Billion a year.

If Bush's debt to date is = $2462.791010474 billion = 107,700,234.87 cubic feet of cash.

This would cover a baseball diamond (90' x 90') to a height of 13,296'

Bush's debt would cover a basketball court (94' x 50') to a height of 22,915' That's a pile of tightly packed $1.00 bills 4.34 MILES high!

Bush's debt would cover an entire NCAA football field (including end zones and sidelines... 160' x 360') to a height of 1869.8'

Back in fall 04 at the Kerry Forum I repeatedly suggested this would make a great 15 second TV campaign ad if aired during football games.

Once these abstract debt numbers are brought down to human scale, the criminal irresponsibility and contempt the GOP has for the nation are painfully evident. But never underestimate the human capacity for self-deception. The Orwellian Right will find some way to justify these crimes and the True Believers on the Right will slop it up like Jim Jones' Cool-Aid.


ulTRAX