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Minnesota House of Representatives

State Representative Tom Hackbarth

309 State Office BuildingState Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-2439

For more information contact: Austin Bleess 651-296-5529

Posted: 2007-12-12 00:00:00
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NEWS COLUMN

LET’S PUT IT INTO PERSPECTIVE

By Tom Hackbarth
State Representative

This past February budget forecast showed the state had a 2 billion dollar surplus. That seems like a lot of money, and it is. For most of us 1 million dollars would be a lot of money. Many of us cannot even fathom having 1 million dollars, let alone having 1 billion dollars.

However, when you talk to politicians they so often talk in billions of dollars it seems like they are not in touch with reality. Even in St. Paul when we talk about the $34 billion budget it makes a few hundred thousand seem like pocket change. But let’s shed a little bit of perspective on things.

How large of a number is 1 billion? Well, a billion seconds ago it was 1959. If you were born a billion seconds ago you would be 48 years old. President Eisenhower would have been in office when you were born.

While a billion seconds wasn’t that long ago, a billion minutes was. In fact, 1 billion minutes ago Jesus was walking on the earth. This helps to put a billion into context a little bit. But let’s put the current state budget into perspective.

Currently the state budget is $34 billion. With a budget that large it takes the state just under 11 days to spend $1 billion. That might not seem like a lot to some people. When you break it into how much the state spends every hour, it seems much larger. The state spends $3,881,278.54 every hour. In fact, the state spends $64,687.98 every minute. The estimated median household income in 2005 for Elk River was $62,500.

With this perspective, can we justify the over $5 billion in new taxes the Democrats proposed last session and will try to pass again this coming session? I don’t think so.

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