A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE (3-5-09)

By The Associated Press – 6 days ago


There has been a dizzying eruption of big numbers from Washington lately, really big ones. Here are some of them.
_ $3.55 trillion. That's the total of the spending blueprint President Barack Obama sent to Congress on Thursday for budget year 2010, which begins Oct. 1.
_ $3.94 trillion. That what total spending would come to in the current 2009 budget year after changes Obama proposed on Tuesday.
_ $1.75 trillion. That's a negative number, the deficit by which the White House predicted that spending for 2009 will exceed the government's revenues.
_ $410 billion. That's the size of spending legislation passed by the House on Wednesday, largely along party lines, that would cover government operations for the remainder of the 2009 budget year.
_ $787 billion. That's the total price tag on a two-year stimulus bill that Obama signed last week. It provides a mix of federal spending to help create jobs, tax cuts and aid to states.
_ $275 billion. That's the maximum of what Obama pledged last week to combat the record number of home foreclosures. Some $75 billion would be used to help struggling homeowners refinance or modify their loans and up to another $200 billion would be used by government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help the mortgage market.
_ $700 billion. That's the size of the financial bailout legislation passed by Congress last October. The Bush administration spent the first half of it, and the Obama administration is in the process of spending the rest. Obama is budgeting for up to another $750 billion bank bailout this year, with a $250 billion contingency fund for 2009 that — if needed — could leverage three times as much in asset purchases from financial institutions in need of capital.
_ $17.4 billion. That's how much automakers General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC got from the government in loans in January. They are now seeking an additional $21.6 billion.
_ $10.84 trillion. That was the size of the national debt — the cumulative total of the federal government's annual budget deficits — as of Thursday, according to the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt.
_ 305.9 million. That was the population of the United States on Thursday, according to a Census Bureau estimate.
_ $35,436. That's every person's individual share of the national debt when the debt is divided by the U.S. population.