Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Oh boy, it's just this kind of arithmetic-avoiding thinking that got us into this mess. That and blaming the President, who hasn't enacted even one spending bill in his entire term.

If you want to blame the Democratic Congress for continuing the profligate spending practiced by the Republican Congress for the preceding eight years when George Bush was President, you'd demonstrate your knowledge of high school civics. But blaming either Bush or Obama for this financial crisis--other than possibly their failure to veto some spending bills--smacks of the misguided partisanship that got us into this mess and is now preventing us from agreeing on the obvious ways to begin to get out of it.

Tell me, Richie, how much would your proposal save--maybe $2-3 million? Just to remind you, the amount of money we've borrowed is more than $14 trillion. If you want to include the unfunded liabilities such as Medicare, Social Security, the prescription drug plan, Medicaid, etc., we're in the hole to the tune of $54 trillion!

Just to put the arithmetic in perspective for you Richie, that's almost five years worth of the entire Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. Laying off a few bureaucrats and personal staff might make you feel good, but "saving us plenty"...puleeze.

DO THE ARITHMETIC...it's not that hard!