Skip to main content

Glenn Beck: How big is $1 trillion?


December 8, 2008 - 13:04 ET
GLENN: Obama says yesterday that it's going to only get worse? No. The economy's only going to get worse and that's why he's now talking about a $1 trillion, not bailout but stimulus package.

Let me give you a handle on how big $1 trillion is. NASA has a budget. You know the people, they send up space planes and the space station and all the satellites and everything else that NASA does? NASA's budget is $17 billion. The post office's budget is $34 billion. The Department of Labor is 10, EPA is 7. Treasury, well, this has got to go up. Can you check on this, Joe? It's only $12 billion, but they've got to be spending a lot more on ink and paper right now. Treasury department is $12 billion. Department of Energy is $24 billion. The Department of Transportation is $12 billion. Justice is $20 billion. Agriculture is $20 billion. Department of Interior is $10 billion. Department of Homeland Security is $120 billion. That's $286 billion for all of those: NASA, post office, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, EPA, Department of Treasury, Department of Energy, transportation, justice, agriculture, and interior, $286 billion. Obama wants a $1 trillion stimulus package. By the way, if you add in the defense budget, the Department of Defense budget for 2009 is $515 billion. Half a trillion dollars. Add that to all of the other departments I just gave you, that's $801 billion. You still have $200 billion left before you reach the new Democratic stimulus package of $1 trillion.

Please, Republicans, Democrats, independents, crazy people, sane people, where's this money coming from? Remember, this is a stimulus package. This isn't a tax cut. This isn't "Let's not take the money from the people. Let's spend the money that we don't have." This is such a disconnect from our founding fathers. This is such a disconnect from everything that America has always stood for.

I read a quote the other day from probably the biggest hate monger. You know, you could call me a hate monger and everything else, but I've never seen anything like this. Don't help the needy completely. Get them to help themselves. You want to avoid dependence on government? Government should be their last resort, not the first of accommodation. Make them uncomfortable in their need: Ben Franklin. Thomas Jefferson said, "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." What does that mean? That the government takes your time.

See, we have replaced -- have you ever heard of the phrase "Time is money"? What does that even mean? "Time is money." The most valuable resource you have is time. Could you use more money? Yes. Would you rather have more money or more time? I don't know about you, but I'd rather have more time. In that time you could make more money, in that time you could spend more time with your family. If you are short on money, you are probably using almost every waking hour to be able to support yourself and your family. Use more time just to be with your family. Time is the most important commodity that we have, and time is money. Well, now does that -- what does that mean, time is money? It takes your time to make the money. The more they take of your money, they're actually taking your time. When they take your money and tax you higher, they're taking your time because it takes more time for you to make up that money. They are taking time from your children. They are taking time from your family. You've got to replace that money. When they take that money from Joe the plumber so they can help somebody else, Joe the plumber needs to replace that. So that means he takes an extra couple of plumbing jobs.

Thomas Jefferson: I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people." They take your time, they take your money and then they waste it, as he says, under the pretense of taking care of them. You know, I've been telling you about the perfect storm for quite a while and I now know how it's going to happen. I now know how the collapse is going to happen. I can't tell you how -- in what form it's going to prompt this, but I will tell you the destruction will come when they say we must do this, we must do it quickly, and we've got to do it for the good of the country. Under the pretense of protecting you, they will destroy America. Jefferson knew that the individual, the family, our churches, our local communities should take care of somebody in need because we can take care of them in a much more caring and quicker circumstance than the federal government 1,000 miles away could ever do. They're not in the position to do that. We have to help each other. We have to pledge to each other that we're going to be those September 12th people.

James Madison said, he warned that we would lose personal self-respect and freedom when government -- quoting -- can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare of seemingly good causes. Well, isn't that what they're doing now? They're employing money indefinitely. They just keep printing it. They just keep taking it and they just keep finding more and more good causes to spend it on. And he said when they do that, we'll lose personal self-respect and freedom.

Well, let's look at the two of those things. How do you lose freedom? How are we possibly losing freedom? Well, you want universal healthcare? Well, you better not smoke. You better not eat that transfat. You better exercise every day. And if you don't, well, then we're not going to take care of you. You're going to die on your own. If you have your own insurance and you have to pay for it, and the free market system says, "Hey, you can't do those things, otherwise you are going to have to pay for this insurance and you are going to have to pay more," you have a choice. You can have those transfats. You can say, "I'm going to be a big fat fatty, I'm not going to eat anything except marshmallows all day." But once you say the government has to take care of you and they have to take care of everybody equally, well, then you need to be baby-sat because you are going to cost an awful lot of money. But the government knows better. At least that's what the Progressives believed when they gave us prohibition. Who could actually say that alcohol is a good thing? Is there anybody within the sound of my voice that can actually say that alcohol is a good thing? You know, you give me the, "Oh, yeah, well, drink a glass of wine and it got..." whatever. I mean, are we really going to -- I mean, really? In the grand scheme of things, isn't alcohol a destructive force? You are using it for medicinal purposes? Okay. You know, cleaning wounds, sterilization, blah, blah, blah, fine. But on the grand scheme of things, alcohol is a destructive force. Here I'm a guy whose faith teaches no alcohol and I'm an alcoholic. There's nobody more anti alcohol than me. But you know what? You keep those liquor stores open. You keep producing that alcohol. You have the right to choose. You want to drink alcohol? God bless ya.

People ask me all the time: Glenn, do you mind if we have a drink? No, why would I mind? It's your choice. You know, if you're my friend and you're destroying yourself through alcohol, that's a different story. "Glenn, do you mind if we -- we're going to have a party. Is it going to make you uncomfortable?" No, this is making me uncomfortable. That conversation, that you think that I'm 4 years old, that you think I'm going to **** you to hell because you drink alcohol. You think, you know, I'm so fragile that I'm going to collapse if you're drinking alcohol. I'm not a progressive. I'm an independent. I believe in the Constitution. I believe in a plan. I believe in a plan that God actually made for all of us and that is free choice. You choose. But the Progressives, the same people who are bringing you all of these progressive things -- you know what drives me crazy is every time I see that commercial for Progressive Auto Insurance. That's not a coincidence, gang. The guy's a huge progressive that started it. These Progressives think they know better than you. They think that they can help you by limiting your choices. It's not a coincidence that the Progressives, the same people who brought you prohibition, are the ones bringing you all the antifat stuff and the transfats and the calorie counts on all of the menus. Are you this stupid? You know what? When they stop treating you like you're an idiot, maybe you'll realize, "Oh, gee, doughnuts are bad for me, cause a heart attack, I go boom down on the floor and die." When we start letting people die because of their bad choices, well, then we're okay. But you know what? People are compassionate and see, that's what always, that's what always hurts choice. It has from the beginning of time. What hurts choice is compassion. I say this as an alcoholic. Enablers, compassion, we can't let anybody fail. It's more compassionate. It is harder to let someone fail. When you let them fail, they grow. They get stronger. They learn from their choice. You don't take their hand and jam it on the stove. But what Progressives want to do is they want to take the stove away from you. They want to have the stove in a different house where only they can use the stove. They will give you what you need. Hot food from time to time. You can't have the stove; you might hurt yourself. You know what? My kid might burn his hand on the stove but he'll do it once. I'm not promoting that he's going to put his hand on the stove, and I'll try to teach him, but I'm not taking away the stove. The stove isn't bad. The burning of his hand isn't bad. The taking away of the stove is bad. How is it that it's more compassionate to just coddle people and just have them live in this world where they don't -- they can't even make choices. They can't learn, they can't grow. That's what we've turned into. We've turned into -- you know, Uncle Sam pisses me off. I didn't think I would ever get to a place where the guy in the stupid striped pants and the stilts would piss me off, but he's pissing me off. First of all, he's wearing the right kind of pants. They're striped. Uncle Sam should be in jail for fraud on the American people. For the same people that have fixed the economy so well, fixed the banking industry, the same people that designed the banking collapse, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd are now calling for a car czar and they are going to fix the auto industry. Well, no, no, no, thanks, thanks, but enough fixing from you two.
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

This describes socialism of the worst sort.

People can be stupid, sick, or simply unlucky. It's really not the responsibility of the government to make everyone safe and happy. They are really not very good at it.

Churches, families, neighbors...they're the ones who are good at it. If I want help from the government, I'll ask for it. I'll ask the government LAST, though.
This whole thing bugs the ba gee bees out of me! My kids and grandkids and their kids will be paying on this crap! If they wanted to "stimulate" than give every American 1 mil a piece and we will stimulate the economy. Heard on the news yesterday: Merrill Lynch CEO wanted 10m bonus with OUR money. AIG folks wanted their bonuses as well. Congress best wake up!
quote:
Originally posted by Howard Roark:
One must laugh (at least silently) over Dodd and Frank calling for accountability! If there was true accountability in Congress, their peers would vote to on a European tradition -- one bottle of good cognac, each, to be delivered to Dodd and Frank, accompanied by a pistol with one bullet, each!


They'd probably miss.
from tysknews.com


How much is a Million?
How much is a Billion?
How much is a Trillion?
What's the difference between a million, a billion, a trillion?

A million seconds is 12 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.

A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.

A million dollars ago was five (5) seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.

A trillion dollars is so large a number that only politicians can use the term in conversation... probably because they
seldom think about what they are really saying.

I've read that mathematicians do not even use the term trillion!

Here is some perspective on TRILLION:

Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000.
The country has not existed for a trillion seconds.
Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds.
One trillion seconds ago – 31,688 years – Neanderthals stalked the plains of Europe.


Million: 1,000,000
Billion: 1,000,000,000
Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Sextillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Nonillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Centillion: 1 followed by 303 zeros
quote:
Originally posted by CT:
So trillions of dollars spent on a war, killing and getting killed, is fine. But 1 trillion spent trying to help people and the country's economy is a terrible thing?


Considering we have yet to spend even close to a single trillion dollars yet (as of December 2, the cost is place at around 657 billion), could you explain what you mean by 'trillions'? (source: Link )

Just put that in perspective. We've been fighting in Iraq now since 2003, over five years, with peopele complaining about it's cost the entire time. Billions of dollars a month.

And we have yet to spend as much as this proposed stimulus package will 'cost'. I use the term 'cost' loosely considering they will just have to make this money appear out of thin air.

Add Reply

Post

Untitled Document
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×