Listening to the current debate in Washington you would think that dollars only come in bundles of billions. Everett Dirksen, a United States Senator from Illinois in the 1960’s, probably summed it up best. Dirksen said, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.”

However, in Washington, we are getting closer and closer to no longer talking about billions. The Senate this week takes up a $900 billion dollar stimulus package after the House passed an $819 billion dollar package last week. By the time a final bill is produced the total will be closer to a trillion dollars.

One trillion dollars. The number is so large that most people have a hard time comprehending its cost. One way to understand it is it to simply write it out. A one with 12 zeros: $1,000,000,000,000. If you had a stack of 1,000 dollar bills, at just four inches high you would be a millionaire. A trillion dollar stack of 1000 dollar bills would reach 63 miles high. 

Counting bailouts and stimulus packages, the United States government will have spent just over two trillion dollars within the last year to get our economy moving. In the coming months, the administration will offer even more billions of additional spending in the budget.

We are not just spending money we do not have; we are spending money that our children will not have. Washington needs to understand that you cannot spend your way to prosperity- no matter how many zeros are behind the one.

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