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</p>While two brutal snowstorms pounded the Washington, DC, area, the government was busy wasting money to the tune of $100 million a day. Extreme weather conditions forced the government to close for four and a half days straight, costing tax payers $450 million in lost productivity, <ahref="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/10/governments-million-day-loss-snowstorm/">according to a Fox News report.
Wondering how much $100 million really is for the government? Last spring, when President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to cut $100 million in spending, Heritages Ken McIntyre <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/Press/ALAChart/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=317720">took a look at what $100 million really means. For some context that will knock your socks off, he cited the following observation from Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY):
Well spend about that much every single day just on interest payments for the $787 billion stimulus bill that Congress passed.
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All that interest was for on an expensive stimulus package that <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2799.cfm">may or may not have had any impact on the struggling economy. Which would you rather spend your hard-earned tax dollars on: one day of stimulus interest payments or one of the federal governments operating expenses?
Furthering his analysis, McIntyre <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/Press/ALAChart/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=317720">also cited Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and economist, who compared $100 million to an entire year of federal spending:
Lets say the administration finds $100 million in efficiencies every working day for the rest of the Obama administrations first term. Thats still around $80 billion, or around 2 percent of one years federal spending.
To the average American tax payer, $100 million might seem staggering; most people wont see that much money over the course of their entire lives. But, for the government, it is quite a different story, as <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/Press/ALAChart/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=317720">McIn tyre points out, “Actually, $100 million might as well be nothing next to federal spending exploding well past $3.5 trillion.
It looks like wasting $450 million dollars is just a drop in the bucket for the federal government. <ahref="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021100995.html?hpid=topnews">The record snowfall may have stopped Washington for a few days, but <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Features/BudgetChartbook/Federal-Spending-Skyrocketing.aspx">record government spending, and its effects, are sure to linger long after the snow is gone.
Jessica LaHousse currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: <ahref="http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm">http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm