Today the House and Senate agreed to a final version of the latest stimulus package. The final package comes in at $789 billion. Round it to $1 trillion.
In response Senator Joseph Lieberman said:
“This represents the beginning of turning our economy around.”
Wait a sec….. the beginning?
I know it’s hard to keep track of things, but didn’t we pay about a trillion just a few months ago to turn our economy around?
Or am I confusing that trillion with the trillion that we gave away for no reason?
How can you round it to $1 Trillion, that’s a $211,000,000,000 difference, or 26% percent increase? I mean if you want a round number that bad, go with $800B.
Justin:
Thanks for your comment. You’re right I’m introducing a non-trivial amount of rounding error by rounding to a trillion.
I did it for two reasons. One, because I needed to write the amount several times in the post, using a trillion saved me some keystrokes.
And two, it’s hard for most people (including me) to wrap their mind around a number this big. Rounding it up for convenience doesn’t change their perception of just how much money we’re spending.