On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 10:13 AM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> > Another example is Congress. It looks likely that the Federal government > will spend more than $4 trillion this year. That comes to about > $7,500,000,000.00 per congressperson in one year. And very likely > about the same amount in the coming years. Name even 10 private actors > that can spend $7.5 billion per year indefinitely. This is a ridiculous argument. You could just as easily say that the CEO of General Motors spends $172 billion all by himself. But GM has more than a quarter of a million employees and many, many of them participate in the decisions about how their budget is used. And the chairman of GM works for its board of directors and stockholders, which is a far smaller group to answer to than the American people. The federal government is much more than just Congress. And Congress' power to determine how money is spent has some significant limits. They can allocate it, but in the end, the executive branch actually has to go out and spend it...and some departments, such as DoD, have almost complete discretion on how to spend it, or, more importantly, how not to spend it. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
