Tom Coburn: “We are considering a very large supplemental spending bill that now stands about $10 billion larger than what the…”

“We are considering a very large supplemental spending bill that now stands about $10 billion larger than what the President has said he will sign. I thought it would be interesting to spend a minute to think about what $1 billion is because we throw that number around so often. We need to consider that $1 billion is a difficult number to comprehend. A billion seconds ago, it was 1959. A billion minutes, ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago, some would say our ancestors were living in the stone age. A billion days ago, no one walked on Earth on two feet. A billion dollars was only 8 hours 20 minutes ago at the rate we are spending money in the Federal Government. A billion is a hard number to get your arms around. It is an interesting number and $10 billion more than what the President thinks we need. More than what we actually need is a tremendous amount of money. The second point I make in talking about this amendment is that the money we are going to spend on this emergency supplemental bill we will not ever see anywhere when we come to talk about the deficit because it will not get included in the deficit reported by the Federal Government. What it will get included in is the payments your children and grandchildren will have to pay back 30 years from now, amortized at 6 percent, and that $10 billion is going to come to about $50 billion when they pay it back. We are reaching forward and stealing opportunity from our kids.…”