Senator David Vitter, R-Louisiana, evoked Jesus Christ in opposition to the Senate health care reform bill.
The bill is projected to cost $848 billion over 10 years.
"First of all, $848 billion is a lot of money," Vitter said. "It's hard to get your hands around that figure."
But here's one way to think about it.
"If someone had started spending $1 million a day when Jesus Christ was born," Vitter explained, "and kept spending that million dollars a day we wouldn't yet be up to that figure."
It's true, if you spent $1 million a day, $365 million a year for the last 2,043 years, you would have doled out about $745 billion.
Another way to grasp the cost of the Senate health care bill of $848 is to compare it to other federal expenditures.
Based on the 2008 budget, we spent about $613 billion on defense. It will take about 16 months of defense spending to get to the 10-year $848 billion health care reform price tag.
Or consider the amount the federal government pays for interest on its debt. In 2008, taxpayers shelled out $249 billion for interest. It will take about 21 months of interest-spending to reach $848 billion.
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Read the full text of the bill yourself. It's 2,074 pages, but most of it is legislative language and there are huge margins.
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Comments
What I don’t understand is why they say this bill will cost $XXX (numbers go up and down a lot) for government run healthcare over the next ten years.
The taxes will start immediately, but the government coverage won’t start until about 2014. That’s four to five years of taxes without the benefit.
Does that mean we will always skip four to five years of government coverage every ten years to keep it deficit neutral? Will they cut defense spending altogether? A sizable, overall tax increase later? Add to the deficit?
Adding to the deficit will only increase the interest-spending?
As far as David Vitter and Jesus Christ are concerned…I tend to never trust any Christian caught in a prostitution scandal.
Let’s hope JC has been more forgiving than America has.
Wasn't Vitter the guy who bought prostitutes left and right? The same guy who is a faithful, abstinence-only Bible-thumping Christian? Why is this disgusting creature in the United States Senate? Deport him!
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