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To: Roads End who wrote (362015)	3/13/2008 5:20:03 PM
From: stan_hughes	Respond to of 436258

Like you probably did as well, I watched Reagan on TV talking about the deficit back then in terms of stacks of dollar bills reaching to the moon I found that image very powerful and it remains stuck in my mind to this day Back then we didn't even have one of those piles built -- now we have nearly four -- it has to stop no matter who's in charge or we all know how it'll end EDIT -- I found a specific reference for nostalgic purposes for any of the young fellers around here who weren't around to see it themselves -- We wouldn't have had the problem in the first place - but if you just think about it, when Ronald Reagan, for instance, ran for President, he made his central theme that we were a debt-ridden society. I remember looking down into Congress when he made his first address to the United States Congress on February 18, 1981 and he had this wonderful metaphor. It was about the debt that was going to do us in. And he said, Do you realize we have just almost hit $1 trillion of the national debt - that is, all the money the United States had spent for its wars and the expansion in space in its entire history was about to hit this horrifying level of $1 trillion. He said -- and only Reagan could do this - "Do you know what that means?" He said, "If you had a stack of dollar bills and put 'em end on end it would go 67 miles up to the Moon." Later on, it went to 130 miles by the time he left because the deficit tripled in his -- the national debt, rather, tripled during his administration. (found buried in this page here -- pbs.org