@realjohnboy,
(At a) joint Senate-House Republican leadership press conference on March 8, 1962, (Senator Everitt) Dirksen said, "The favorite sum of money is $1 billion " a billion a year for a fatter federal payroll, a billion here, a billion there." (Pundits quipped "and pretty soon you're talking about real money" that got added to the line but which there is no evidence that Dirksen actually said.)
From the Dirksen files:
Quote:"One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?'
"Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?' Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell.'
"If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it." [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].
And also:
Quote:"As I think of this bill, and the fact that the more progress we make the deeper we go into the hole, I am reminded of a group of men who were working on a street. They had dug quite a number of holes. When they got through, they failed to puddle or tamp the earth when it was returned to the hole, and they had a nice little mound, which was quite a traffic hazard.
"Not knowing what to do with it, they sat down on the curb and had a conference. After a while, one of the fellows snapped his fingers and said, ‘I have it. I know how we will get rid of that overriding earth and remove the hazard. We will just dig the hole deeper.'" [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].
I wonder what Senator Dirksen would have said about a $3.4 trillion dollar budget, and more than $9 trillion in projected deficits? Probably, a trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon we're talking about real money.
It is disheartening when we look at $17 billion in proposed spending reductions and declare that a 'drop in the bucket'.
