The Associated Press is reporting that the budget deficit for this year is projected to be 1.47 trillion dollars. That’s TRILLION. Back in the 1950s, Senator Everett Dirksen, (R-IL), was an eloquent speaker for fiscal restraint. A most effective speaker, a true old-fashioned, crowd pleasing orator, he inveighed against any and all spending by the government he thought unnecessary, which was most of it. He remarked sadly, one time, that “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” That in a day when a billion dollars was indeed real money. It is amusing to speculate what Senator Dirksen would say of the Obama administration and the Congress spending such unthinkable sums on handouts to unions and Wall Street and other favored Democrat constituencies. Will the Chinese continue to buy our bonds? How long before we go the way of Greece and Portugal?

Senator Dirksen was known to declare

In a voice fairly dripping with honey

That a mere billion here and a mere billion there

And soon we are talking real money

Ike then was prez though his syntax did irk us

He balanced the budget for sure

But now we spend money for things like this circus

And smiling they come back for more

Where will it go and where will it end

Obama is digging a hole

The bigger it gets then the more they will spend

And soon we’ll all be on the dole

Trillions in debt for as far as may be

Our grandkids will work for no pay

For taxes will rise like the incoming sea

 And rue that far gone ‘lection day