Ted Poe: “we hear a lot about the economy, as we should, but I would like to focus on the cost of all of this money that the…”

“we hear a lot about the economy, as we should, but I would like to focus on the cost of all of this money that the government says it needs to spend. The front page of today's USA Today is headlined, ``Trillions Aimed At Financial Recovery,'' and here we see a photograph of the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner, scratching his head as he is talking to Members of Congress when he testified yesterday. Now we hear about the billions spent for this program and the trillions spent for this program all in the name of helping the economy. I would like to focus on the cost of all of this. If you add up all of the bailout packages from last year, the so-called stimulus packages, and the bills yet to be passed but promised to be passed this year, plus the debt that it will cost Americans yet to be born, it is $9,700,000,000,000. Now that is the biggest number I have ever seen in my life. And $9 billion, it is hard to relate to what 9 billion or $9,700,000,000,000 is. Well, let's try to focus on how much that really is in terms maybe we can understand. If you add up all of the major wars that the United States has been involved in since we were a country, and you put 2009 dollars to those figures, this amount of money still would not cover the cost of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the War Between the States, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Iraqi wars and the Afghanistan wars.”