"...To the MOON, Alice!"

Below is a good message that I received today:

"By my (unaudited) calculations, a stack of $100 bills would stretch from
Washington, DC to Denver, or at least to western Kansas. (1452 miles). I'm
using 250 bills per inch.

If laid end-to-end, six-inch $100 bills .... darn. I just looked at my
calculations again, and I'm off by a factor of 10. I thought we were just
about to get to the perogee of the moon's orbit. Instead, we've blown beyond
by 10x.

Maybe somebody with a more fertile mind than mine can make something of
this.

Oh! Duh. Let's use $1000 bills. I calculated 217,803 miles. From my days as
an astronomy merit badge counselor, the moon's perogee is 220,000 miles.

Can somebody run these numbers and confirm them? And at this rate (see
recent budget history below), on what day will annual federal spending reach
the moon in $1000 bills?

To me, this just smells like a press release, if not much more -- the day
$1000 bills reach the moon.. Reagan used some statistics like this in 1980,
81 or 1984. It would be interesting to hear how we've regressed.

For completeness,

Clinton's last budget was $1.84 T (source KMOX radio, St. Louis)
Bush's first budget, before 9-11 and Jumpin Jim Jeffords when the R's had
the presidency and both houses, was $1.96 T, or $150 per MONTH more spending
for every family of size four in America (source, USA Today)

Then the budgets went to $2.12 (post 9-11), then $2.23, now $2.3. So Bush's
spending, from the party of limited government, is over $500 / month more
spending for a family of size four than Clinton's ever was.

The quants among us ought to be able to figure out the day this happens, and
we should make a splash with it."

Bob Sullentrup

(Good job, Bob. That should unmuddy the waters for any die-hard Republicans who still believe that the Republicans are the party of smaller government. In November, vote Libertarian - FT)