It ain’t fair to put this all on that crazy cowboy from Texas, but studies indicate that the United States spent about $11.5 trillion—that is correct, eleven thousand and five hundred billion—during the presidency of George W Bush. If you weren’t quite sure, that is (a lot) more than ever before. And while I would like to do some kind of fun little exercise to explain how many _____s you could have bought with that money, no adequate or understandable comparisons can be made.
As you might have guessed, a lot went into setting this kind of a record, from a total economic collapse on Wall Street in late 2008, to that devastating terrorist attack back in 2001 and its successive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet perhaps the most important factor to note is that such spending is not about to come to a screeching halt in the months and years after president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20th, 2009. While the next pres has aspirations of recovering the American economy, it’s true that he too will be forced to adhere to that age-old proverb: “you gotta spend money to make money.” And so, while $11.5 trillion dollars is undoubtedly a sh*tload of money, the numbers are sure to continue rising while the national debt skids closer to that inevitable point at which most citizens start scratching their heads and wondering, ‘does this number actually mean anything or can we just keep not making money forever?’
In other news, today is the last day during which news articles will refer to Barack Obama as the ‘president-elect.’ Yay-yay! *terrorist fist bump*
