Former Senator Everett Dirksen, from Illinois, famously said on the floor of the Senate “a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, pretty soon, it adds up to real money.”  That statement was made during the 1960's.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.  For example:

A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending dollars today.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain ... let's take a look at New Orleans.  It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 billion dollars to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number ...

What does it mean?

For example, if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you could each get $516,528.  Or ... If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, you could get $1,329,787.  Finally, if you are a family of four ... your family could get $2,066,012.

The point is, we are talking about $8 - $12 trillion deficits and unfunded taxpayer liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for as far as anyone can project.  

What follows is a list of the taxes we, as citizens currently pay, and quite frankly the revenues from these are not enough to pay for all of the spending currently in place at the city, state, and federal levels.  Here they are:

Accounts Receivable Tax

Building Permit Tax

CDL License Tax

Cigarette Tax

Corporate Income Tax

Dog License Tax

Federal Income Tax

Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)

Fishing License Tax

Food License Tax

Fuel Permit Tax

Gasoline Tax

Hunting License Tax

Inheritance Tax

Inventory Tax

IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

Liquor Tax

Luxury Tax

Marriage License Tax

Medicare Tax

Property Tax

Real Estate Tax

Service charge taxes

Social Security Tax

Road Usage Tax (Truckers)

Sales Taxes

Recreational Vehicle Tax

School Tax  

State Income Tax  

State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)

Telephone Federal Excise Tax

Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax

Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax

Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax

Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax  

Telephone State and Local Tax

Telephone Usage Charge Tax

Utility Tax

Vehicle License Registration Tax

Vehicle Sales Tax

Watercraft Registration Tax

Well Permit Tax

Workers Compensation Tax

The bottom line for all of us, as citizens, is that we must hold our elected and appointed officials accountable with respect to spending and the cost of that spending to us individually and the economic drag it creates on our economy.

  It is no wonder that citizens from all political perspectives have an extremely negative view of our current elected officials, particularly in Washington.

The current Democrat Majority in the Senate through its leadership absolutely opposed, under any circumstances, the use of the legislative tactic called reconciliation when the Republicans were in the Majority and they were in the Minority.

  The Republicans ignored their protests.  

Now, the roles are reversed and the Democrats appear to be ready to ignore the objections of Republicans.

 Regardless of the merits of the proposed legislation being considered, this behavior clearly reminds all of us of the child who gets caught doing something wrong and responds by saying: “They did it first!”