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If you’re like me, you may have trouble getting your head around the concept of a billion anything. Yet, we hear the word almost daily with regard to government spending.

A few weeks ago, I came upon a video of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul giving a speech on the Senate floor, discussing federal spending, using the terms “billion” and “trillion” –mind-boggling numbers we hear about every day.

In case you’re not familiar, Sen. Paul ran three times for president and is best known for promoting limited federal government and a balanced budget. Every so often, he sounds the alarm about pork-barrel spending.

A billion dollars would equal a pile of thousand-dollar bills piled four inches high, in the palm of your hand, the senator said.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a thousand-dollar bill, and I suspect you haven’t either, yet politicians of all stripes spend billions of them every day.

By the way, a billion is a thousand times a million, or 10 to the 9th power, for those who remember algebra class. It’s written like this: 1,000,000,000.

Sen. Paul used increments of time to illustrate how large these numbers are.

A billion seconds ago, President Ronald Reagan was beginning his second term: it was 1985.

A billion minutes ago, the Pantheon in Rome was being completed. The year was 125 A.D.

A billion hours ago, the world was in the Stone Age.

Yet, a billion dollars ago, was only a couple of minutes ago in terms of federal spending. Incredibly, our government spends a whopping $30 billion an hour.

Such spending is not sustainable. Our federal deficit is already $34 trillion and growing, by some two trillion since this past December. 

So, what does a trillion dollars look like?  It’s written with 12 zeros:  1,000,000,000,000.

Given the fact that there are some 8 billion people on earth, a trillion dollars is enough to pay each human being $125.  But remember, the U.S. deficit is 34 times that amount—enough to pay everyone on earth $4,250!

To pay off our current national debt would take more than $102,000 per person now living in the United States. In fact, we’re paying for it with inflation. Sadly, as Uncle Sam prints more and more money, the dollar is worth less and les

For illustration, one billion 100-dollar bills would fill a large walk-in closet, 6 x 9 feet.

A trillion 100-dollar bills would fill 4.5 Olympic swimming pools. Wow, you think. That’s a lot of cash. And it is.

But Washington has already spent nine Olympic pools full since Dec. 29.

Watch the National Debt Clock at www.usdebtclock.org  Be prepared to have your mind thoroughly boggled.

---Tammy Wilson is a writer who lives near Newton. Contact her at  [email protected] 

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