Haha, yeah I should have put quotes around "only" but you have to keep in mind that this ~900billion that remains is the entire government budget for everything besides stuff like medicare, social security, and so on.
When people think about government spending they tend to handwave away billions and, as per this thread, millions are seen as a rounding error.
But I think thats because most people are thinking about the entire budget - which is around was 6.7 trillion on total revenue of 4.9 trillion.
But when "only" 900 billion of that is left for all the neat things government could do it really nails home the impact of things like a trillion dollars per year spent in interest on the debt.
It really also makes clear why starting to slim things down is essentially becoming necessary. The current system is not sustainable.
When people think about government spending they tend to handwave away billions and, as per this thread, millions are seen as a rounding error.
But I think thats because most people are thinking about the entire budget - which is around was 6.7 trillion on total revenue of 4.9 trillion.
But when "only" 900 billion of that is left for all the neat things government could do it really nails home the impact of things like a trillion dollars per year spent in interest on the debt.
It really also makes clear why starting to slim things down is essentially becoming necessary. The current system is not sustainable.