So what.

Obama's going to run up our national debt to over two trillion and everyone is cheering. 290 billion is pocket change. Heck, after the last 350 billion dollar bail out they totally lost 63 billion and don't have a clue where it went.

Don't forget, congress spends the money. Reagan had a democratic congress, just like we had the last two years under Bush. And in fact until the early 90's, the Democrats controlled the purse strings for 40 years. That would have been the 21% interest rate and 12.5% unemployment days.