On April 2nd, Speaker Nancy Pelosi succeeded in passing her federal budget that outlines more than 3.5 trillion dollars in spending for fiscal year 2010. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected a 1.8 trillion dollar deficit for the current fiscal year (FY2009), and that projection does not include the stimulus bill that will cost Americans more than one trillion dollars, which was signed into law by the President on February 1st. As of April 7, 2009, the U.S. national debt stands at more than eleven trillion dollars (you can view the latest numbers here).


The sheer magnitude of Speaker Pelosi’s spending spree is mind boggling. Most of us do not use the number 1,000,000,000,000 in our daily lives, so it is difficult to attach tangible value to the figure. However, as Congress and the Administration continues spending your tax dollars trillions of dollars at a time, it is worthwhile to have a discussion about what these numbers really mean.

One of the simplest ways to get an idea of one trillion dollars is to consider the amount in terms of the passage of time. One million seconds is equal to roughly eleven days and twelve hours, and one billion seconds is thirty-two years. One trillion seconds equals thirty-two thousand years.

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