The Trouble with Trillions
President Bush signs half-trillion
spending bill this week

When I was a kid I had a most unusual love for numbers and math. According to my parents, before I learned to read I would go through the pages of a book and learn the numbers at the bottom of each page. In that manner I learned all the numbers from one to 300 or so.

To put “one-half trillion” in perspective, one-half trillion seconds ago, Paleo-Indians were hunting mastadons in North America. Image courtesy of the Demeter Museum of Illinois.

When I was in sixth grade, my math teacher would occasionally do things like make us add all the numbers between, say, 1 and 50. I devised a method whereby I would pair all the numbers (1+50=51; 2+49=51; 3+48=51; etc.) and simply multiply the common number (in this case 51) by half of the total numbers (in this case 25). So instead of adding up all the numbers 1 through 50, I could get the same answer much quicker by multiplying 25 times 51.

Somewhere during the subjects of trigonometry, calculus and statistics, I lost a little of my fascination for numbers and turned my attention to words. It was a good decision even though I still like to convert fractions in my head while I’m driving.

I was thinking about numbers this week when it was announced that President Bush had signed a $555 billion spending bill that will fund the war in Iraq well into 2008 and keep government agencies running through September of that year. Considering that our nation’s population is roughly a little over 300 million, that budget constitutes approximately $1,800 in tax dollars from every man, woman and child in the country. When you start thinking about all of the children and retirees who don’t work at all, it’s easy to see where the number is probably closer to $2,500+ per taxpayer.

To really put $555 billion in perspective, you have to remember that it is more than half a trillion dollars. If you have a hard time wrapping your head around the number “one-half trillion,” here are some facts for you:

Half a trillion seconds ago equals 15,844 years ago. That’s about the time that mankind made its first forays across the Bering Strait and began inhabiting the Americas. It is also about 8,000 years before man started utilizing agriculture in the Nile River basin and about 13,800 years before Jesus Christ was born. That’s a lot of seconds ago!

A trillion is a number that most folks never have to think about because it rarely, if ever, comes up in our daily lives. The population of the world is only around 6.6 billion so it’s going to be a few years before we use the word “trillion” in that context. Scientists estimate the age of the entire universe at 15 billion years, so even when you’re talking about all the years that have ever been and the ages of the oldest stars in the sky, you don’t have to utter the word “trillion.”

But evidently, politicians have no trouble with the word when it comes to talking about the number of dollars that they need to spend.

Worse than the amount of money that some politicians believe it takes to run this country, are the things they fail to do with that money when they actually get their hands on it. If we’re spending more than a half-trillion of tax dollars every year, I really shouldn’t hear about teachers having to spend their own money on classroom materials. I shouldn’t hear about communities with failing bridges and terrible roads. I shouldn’t hear about seniors who have to make the choice between prescription drugs and heating oil.

But I’m hearing about those things all the time.

If we are the greatest country in the world, and I still think we are, we need to get our priorities straight. We need to let our representatives know that while they’ve got their hands in our pockets we’d like to talk to them about our priorities for that money they’re about to spend. After all, it is more than half a trillion dollars of our money.