TWO GRENADES TO EXPLODE THE VEILS OF WASHINGTON D.C.

Remember two numbers: $6 and $20,000.  

For every "billion" spent by the United States' federal government, the cost to you the average taxpayer is $6.00.  The math is simple.  One billion dollars divided by the roughly 150 million employed in this country equals $6.67 per taxpayer.  You can be more precise, but the point doesn't change.  $6 is still a great ballpark figure to use.

So what?  Well, every day in the press our president or congressmen propose spending "x" billion on this program or that.  To the uninformed, this is just meaningless noise.  Does anyone even know how much one billion dollars is?  It's not a term that affects us directly... which is exactly why government spending is in those terms.  A legislature wants to win votes with his proposal, not alienate voters who think he's loose with their money.

When you are armed with this knowledge, you can talk intelligently about these issues that really do affect us all.  For example, in today's USA Today Washington is buying up $500 billion in questionable mortgages from banks.  "Wow", you might say.  "That's a big number."  Or, if you use the $6 Rule, you'll quickly figure, "Wait a minute, they are taking $3000 of the tax money that I paid in taxes to give to these banks!"  "What the H---!?"  

Now, that's better.  Sorry to disturb you with reality, but that in fact IS what's going on.

Now that you know enough to be dangerous (VERY dangerous to politicians), spread the word and let's get government under control.

* By the way, $20,000 is the amount of money Washington plans to spend in 2009 per average taxpayer.  Again, the simple math:  $3.13 trillion divided by the 154 million employed in November 2008 equals $20,324 per worker.  To pay out this $20,324, the federal government will access money from:

$8,170 Individual Income Taxes
$9,350 Other Taxes, such as Social Security and Corporate Income Taxes
$2,804 Increase in the Federal Debt (In 2009 net interest payment on the national debt will be $228 billion.  Can you use the $6 Rule to figure our YOUR SHARE of this?)

Thanks for reading.