One Billion Dollars is . . .

Patrick Tyrrell / January 01, 2010

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon we’ve got real money. So said Illinois’s Sen. Everett Dirksen, the long-time Minority Leader during the 1960s. who often reminded his colleagues about how quickly a million here and there added up to enormous sums of public spending.

Today, of course, its billions, and Members of Congress spend that denomination with the ease they used to spend millions. However, do Members or most of the general public have a solid grasp of how large a number a billion actually is?

To put a billion in perspective, we’ve placed nine zeros after the number 1 and (taking our inspiration from a popular email circulating around Internet space this year) have calculated several, hopefully useful ways to grasp the magnitude of “one billion dollars.” Consider the following facts: (more…)