What $700 billion could do

I thought it might be a good plan to think of better things we could do with the $700 billion burning a hole in the pocket of the Treasury Department. Ignore for a moment the fact that they don't HAVE $700 billion and is in fact TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. But what's ten percent more debt when you have no plan to ever pay off the debt you already have?

When I look at New England, I have just one thought: pavement.

With pavement running at $4 per yard for large jobs (and none was ever larger than this one) we could pave a square mile for $12.4 million. $700 billion would cover 56,451 square miles.

That would be Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersy, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. I'm guessing we could get them to throw in DC for free, considering the size of the job (in addition to the tax right-off for civic service).

Alternatively, we could just pave the entire state of Illinois. Consider it the biggest earmark BO ever brought home.

Another bright idea I had was to buy 700 billion "Scratchers" tickets. That way we at least have pretty good odds of getting SOMETHING back for our money. The obvious disadvantage is the problem of finding enough coins to scratch them, and then trying to get rid of all that silver gunk you scratch off each ticket.

The latest version of the bailout bill has some added perks like tax cuts. If you want to cut taxes, that's great. Write a tax cut bill and I'll call my Congresscritters to ask them to support it. But to coin a phrase, if you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.