A $400 million price tag for a ballroom?
Philadelphia Inquirer
Ira Goldstein & Gregory Squires
The import of budget figures, particularly those large values contained within the federal budget, has become something to which we are numb, or worse, indifferent.
A $1.5 trillion request for the U.S. Department of Defense, when all government expenditures total just over $7.5 trillion, is a large number and gets the attention of Congress. But the public is systematically desensitized to expenditures in the billions, and millions barely get noticed.
This is not new; it just seems worse. “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money” is a wry observation widely attributed to the late U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen in the 1960s.
But expenditures in the millions and billions are important, and they reflect important choices, even if those choices are not obvious. Joe Biden, quoting his father, said: “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget — and I’ll tell you what you value.”
An interesting thought experiment is to imagine what alternative investments could be made in place of some currently controversial choices, since budgets are not unlimited.
