WASHINGTON -- If all goes well for President Barack Obama, this could be one of the most expensive weeks in U.S. history.
The Senate is expected to pass an $827 billion fiscal stimulus bill, which must then be reconciled with a separate $819 billion House version. The Treasury Department will unveil a sweeping plan to use the remaining $350 billion in the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. Total cost: at least $1.1 trillion.
For perspective, the total cost of U.S. war funding since 2001 has been about $904 billion, according to a report by Steven Kosiak at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The fiscal stimulus plan Congress approved last year (remember those rebate checks?) was $168 billion. President George W. Bush’s fiscal year 2009 budget request to Congress was $3.1 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office last month predicted that the federal deficit in 2009 would reach $1.2 trillion--before the addition of a stimulus bill. The entirety of U.S. economic output is about $14.5 trillion.
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