"What's a trillion"?

Too much? Let's start with "What's a million?" That's a paraphrase of comments made by C.D. Howe, the Canadian "Minister of Everything" in the post-war Liberal government. During debate over estimates for the War Appropriation Bill in 1945,  Mr Howe told an opposition member, "I daresay my honourable friend could cut a million dollars from that amount, but a million dollars from the War Appropriations Bill (of more than $1.35 billion) would not be a very important matter."

John Diefenbaker, a Conservative MP, quickly rephrased Mr Howe’s words as "What's a million?" It is used even today to portray liberal governments' arrogance and looseness with the public purse.

Three-quarters of a century ago, a million dollars was a considerable sum of money. Half a century ago politicians went from talking of "millions" to "billions". Now even 000,000,000 (nine zeros) isn't enough, and another three zeros have been added to appropriations bills in Biden's US of A.

Last month, the Senate passed an infrastructure bill backed by Sleepy Joe, costed at roughly $1,000,000,000,000 -- a million million or trillion dollars. All of the Senate Dumbocrats and 19 Republicans (?) voted for it. It now needs to be approved by the House before being sent to Mr Biden's desk.

But wait... Apparently a trillion dollars isn't enough for the "progressive Democrats" in the House of Representative, who have vowed not to advance it unless and until the Senate passes an accompanying "reconciliation" bill which will cost... wait for it... $3.5 trillion!

The “Squad,” which includes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have joined Burnie Sanders (I-VT), the chairman of the Senate budget committee, in refusing to budge on the linking of the two bills, as a package deal. 

They say moderate Democrats, like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kristen Sinema (D-AZ), are standing in their way by opposing the gargantuan price tag of the social safety net expansion, which includes funding for healthcare, climate change, childcare, affordable housing, and education, all for the benefit of "marginalized communities" suffereing from centuries of "systemic racism" yada yada yada.

Sen. Manchin, along with many Republicans argue that the national debt is too large for this type of spending, and that it could contribute to already higher-than-normal rates of inflation. He told the Clinton News Network today that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer "will not have my vote on $3.5 (trillion) and Chuck knows that, and we’ve talked about this."

All this talk of billions and trillions reminded me of something I read in Bill Bryson's commendable Notes From a Big Country (Doubleday, 1998). The entire national debt, at the time Mr Bryson was writing, stood at $4.5 million, the total of the two bills now proposed by the Democraps. Mr Bryson puts millions, billions and trillions in terms than even I can understand. 

Big numbers are simply beyond what we are capable of grasping.... What does $4.5 trillion actually mean?

Let's just try for a trillion. Imagine that you were in a vault with the whole of America's national debt and you were told you could keep each dollar bill you initialled. Say, too, for the sake of argument, that you could initial one dollar bill each second and that you worked straight through without stopping. How long do you think it would take to count a trillion dollars?...

If you initialled one dollar per second, you would make $1000 every 17 minutes. After twelve days of non-stop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. Thus it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1200 days -- something over three years -- to reach $100 million.

After 31.7 years, you would become a billionaire, and after almost a thousand years you would be as wealthy as Bill Gates.... But not until after 31,709.8 years would you count your trillionth dollar, and then you would be less than one-fourth of the way through the pile of money representing America's national debt.

That is what $1 trillion is.