Monday, January 25, 2010

What's wrong with this Drudge Report headline?

Matt Drudge is the best at what he does.  He (or his people, he probably has people by now) seem to screen everything and pull out the truly newsworthy pieces from everywhere around the internet and provide links in one place.  The Drudge Report is the first place I go to find out what is going on around the world.  

But I've got a gripe.  He's linked to this Associated Press story (for lack of a better word) that lists the public debt, receipts, and outlays of the federal government for fiscal 2008 and 2009.  The numbers are too big for the AP to print in their entirety.  No big deal, right?  Lots of financial statements drop off three zeros.  Well, when talking about the U.S. federal debt, they had to drop six - SIX - zeros to make the numbers comprehensible.  How could anyone comprehend that the total public debt outstanding as of January 22 was $12,302,465,000,000.  That's over 12 TRILLION dollars folks.  TWELVE TRILLION!

The Drudge Report added the zeros, so what's my gripe?  Well, "THEY" don't owe that massive amount of money -- "WE" do.  If only "they" did, I wouldn't be worried.  But since I do, and my kids do, and you and your kids and grandkids and their grandkids do, I'm a little bit worried.  And more than a little bit angry . . .

Dear Washington,

It's time to cut spending, massively.  Cut, cut, cut.  No new programs, not a one, until you've cut three times its cost from the budget.  And no fuzzy math.  Real numbers, real cuts, not reductions in percentage increase for your pet projects.  Not President Obama's tiny, tinkering, proposal to freeze - that's freeze, not roll back - spending on a part of the budget.

And, while you're tinkering, you might want to stimulate growth in the economy by maybe, get this, cutting taxes.

Sincerely,

SLC

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