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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Millions, Billions, Trillions -- It's All the Same to Washington

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Neil Cavuto, Managing Editor & Anchor

FOXBusiness

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A 1.2 trillion-dollar budget deficit. The biggest ever. And getting worse.

Debate over seating one Roland Burris. Perhaps the weirdest Capitol spectacle ever. And getting weirder.

Which do you think got more press today?

Bingo!

Maybe that's the problem. We don't seem to have a problem with budgets out of control.

But seem obsessed by Washington soap operas that are "always" out of control.

Here's the deal:

Try as I might to tell you a trillion dollars is a lot of money.

That it's a million, million bucks.

That if you wrote it out on a check, you'd have 12 zeros to the left of the decimal point.

It's a big point.

A big check.

But apparently a big yawn to a Congress and president used to these numbers.

And a president coming in resigned to these numbers.

Maybe for years to come.

So we shrug our shoulders and keep on spending.

Because we've always shrugged our shoulders and kept on spending.

Assuming there's no government problem so big that spending more money on it might not make it bigger.

But it does.

It always does.

Because when you're addicted to spending a lot of money it doesn't take a lot of time for you to lose a lot of perspective.

Millions don't matter. Billions don't matter. Trillions don't matter.

Only spending that, and then some, matters.

So we've resigned ourselves to sums we cannot pay, and money for programs we can now only print.

We are a nation of crack addicts, and the drug of choice is money we don't have.

A drug foisted on us by Republicans and Democrats alike; convinced we'd prefer the effects of the crack than waking up and realizing they're the ones who are cracked.

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