What is a Billion?

The next time you hear liberal politicians such as Senator John McCain and other members of the Democratic Party use the word "billion" in casual conversation, think about their priorities. Would you consider yourself one of Senator John McCain’s top priorities?

For most people, a billion is a difficult number to comprehend. Congressmen don’t give it much thought either. Why not put that number into some perspective?

A. One billion seconds ago - it was 1959.
B. One billion minutes ago - Jesus was alive.
C. One billion hours ago - our human ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. One billion days ago – no human walked on the earth on two feet.
E. At the rate our government is spending, a billion U.S. dollars ago was just 8 hours and 20 minutes.

While this thought is fresh in your mind, take a look at New Orleans. It represents only one of many thousands of recent examples of profligate spending by Congress.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), asked the Congress of the United States for 250 BILLION dollars to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Before all is said and done, whether directly to the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, or through the Army Corps of Engineers, most of that tax money will find its way to the Gulf Coast.

Over one-half billion federal tax dollars have already been spent in Mississippi restoring damaged state schools. While counterintuitive, these federal funds dispensed to the State of Mississippi were not loans for the purpose of rebuilding the state’s schools, but Washington, D.C. exercising a federal ownership interest, authority over, and responsibility for what have become U.S. government schools (indoctrination centers) in Mississippi. Pause and reflect on the socialist implications of the federal government's ownership and control of state schools.

Senator Ted Kennedy is a staunch proponent of such spending. Consider the “Big Dig” in Massachusetts. The Big Dig is the unofficial name of the Central Artery/Tunnel (CA/T), a mega-project to reroute Interstate 93, the controlled-access highway through the heart of Boston, Massachusetts, into a 3.5 mile (5.6km) tunnel under the city. The Big Dig is the most expensive highway project in America. Planning for the Big Dig officially began in 1982.

Environmental impact studies started in 1983. After years of extensive lobbying for federal dollars, a 1987 public works bill appropriating funding for the Big Dig was passed by U.S. Congress, and quickly vetoed by President Ronald Reagan as being too expensive. Congress overrode his veto and in 1991, the Big Dig began in earnest.

The project was estimated at $2.5 billion in 1985. Over $14.6 billion has been spent in federal and state tax dollars as of 2006, with Congress adding more money (your tax dollars) every year to Senator Ted Kennedy’s marquis project every time an appropriations bill presented itself. The project has been plagued with delays, escalating costs, leaks, shoddy workmanship, intentional use of substandard materials and even arrests. The Massachusetts Attorney General is demanding that contractors refund MA taxpayers $108 million for "shoddy work." Taxpayers across the rest of the nation are unlikely to benefit from any recovery – the money is gone. The final ramp of the Big Dig opened after 15 years of construction on what was supposed to be less than a ten-year project on January 13, 2006. Six months later, the tunnel segment under South Boston which connects the mainline of I-90 to the newly-constructed Ted Williams Tunnel, was closed indefinitely to the public because the tunnel ceiling collapsed on July 10, 2006 killing a female passenger riding in a vehicle.

Returning to New Orleans, there were 484,674 permanent residents of New Orleans when Katrina struck. For each one of those 484,674 inhabitants, $250 billion would provide over one-half million dollars to each person, $516,528 to be exact – for every man, woman and child. For every family of four, that’s over 2 million dollars of our tax money - $2,066,112. Or, if you happened to own one or more of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, and homes were your focus, each and every home would be entitled to $1,329,787. One year later, and billions of dollars spent to repair the partial destruction (less than 5%) of the New Orleans levee system by Hurricane Katrina, the head of the Army corps of Engineers conceded on August 26th that it wasn’t clear if the levee system (read: luck will be needed) will ever be able to withstand a heavy storm surge from a Category 3 hurricane, let alone Category 4 or 5. A new hurricane season has just begun. Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) or her successor will soon be asking for another 250 billion tax dollars. Instead of opening education accounts for our children, maybe we should be opening levee accounts for Louisiana.

Why doesn’t Louisiana sell state bonds to fund their own levee repairs, particularly in those areas unrelated to national commerce on the Mississippi River? Most states and many cities sell “capital improvement” bonds to fund everything from football stadiums to water treatment facilities to transportation systems and state schools. The answer is self evident. No one would invest in the efficiency of the LA state government or risk calamitous acts of nature that will reoccur along the Gulf Coast. No insurance company would touch it. Neither should the U.S. government and U.S. taxpayers.

Today, we find ourselves confined in the same room with an elephant named FEMA, the antithesis of individual responsibility and another failed product of Congress. FEMA is so fat it can’t turn around in its own confines without doing more harm than good. The corruption is staggering, mostly ignored, and far beyond the control of FEMA administrators. Congress feeds incredible sums of tax money to FEMA. Citizens, churches and charitable organizations spend most of their time with shovels cleaning up after the “benefits” FEMA provides to us – same as families must do with the Education Department, the results of which are evident in everyday life. Speaking of education, Congress and the NEA have proudly refined and reformed education in America to the point that only a few high school graduates can figure it out. The vernacular expression, “duh,” may finally have achieved some social and fiscal relevance.

Red State Patriot

A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it, and Congress is spending almost a billion (one thousand million dollars) tax dollars every 8 hours - most unconstitutionally if anyone still cares. Have you had a talk with your Senators and Representative lately? Are you going to vote?

Posted September 7, 2006 03:28 PM
Read more on Articles - Red State Patriot ~ Budget, Taxation and Fiscal Policy