$3 trillion

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush budget.

The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eyepopping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs.

The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.

Slumping revenues (the result of Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy — Dr. S) and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the White House says, just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.

But even those figures are optimistic since they depend on rosy economic forecasts and leave out the full costs of the war in Iraq.

Just how much is $3 trillion?

A person given $1 million a year to spend would need 3 million years to blow $3 trillion. One would have to circumnavigate the globe 120 million times to travel 3 trillion miles. Similarly, that would be some 17,000 round trips to the sun.

But somehow, there’s little room in a $3.1 trillion budget for programs that help the poor.

By the way, the “.1” in $3.1 trillion represents $100 billion. So to that example of a person blowing $1 million a year, add 100,000 years.