Federal Budget Numbers Now Stratospheric

WASHINGTON (AP) — It used to be the government's budget picture was measured in billions of dollars. No longer. Trillions, that's the yardstick of the 21st century.

In 1981, the trillion dollar figure was such a novelty that President Ronald Reagan declared it incomprehensible. "If you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you'd be a millionaire," the president said then. "A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.

Now consider the mileage in this:

— Today, the government faces nearly a $1.6 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to government budget officials.

— It faces a cumulative 10-year deficit of about $9 trillion. That's $30,000 for each man, woman and child in the United States.

— It's publicly held debt is projected by the White House budget office to total a whopping $17.5 trillion by 2019 — a figure so big it is three-quarters of the nation's entire economy — and big enough that it would send Reagan's stack of thousand-dollar bills into satellite orbit.