And I used to think $17,000,000,000 was a lot of money...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – "President Barack Obama Thursday showcased his bumper 3.44-trillion-dollar budget, but facing record deficits, vowed to cut "stunning" waste by slicing 121 programs worth 17 billion dollars."

$17 billion seems like a lot, until you compare it to the budget. How about a visual aid:


Let's compare just the added expenses to the cuts:
The budget increase is 20 times the amount of the cuts. This is like taking one step forward, and 20 back. Or killing 20 people to save one life, and then patting yourself on the back for the life you saved. While that example seems ridiculous, the Federal Government's done it before. But in the case of the 1976 swine flu vaccinations, the results were statistically even worse. The vaccine killed 25 people compared to the one person who died from the flu.

Don't forget that this budget increase comes on top of top of the largest Federal budget in history. But then again, that could be said every year.

EDIT: I had a request to put this in pie chart format. Here it goes:*

*For some reason, I couldn't get Google Docs Spreadsheet program to change the word "Other" to "Proposed Budget Cuts". And for the record, this isn't a joke. I wanted to use a pie chart originally, but it was so small in comparison it didn't show up. I used the bar graph instead, so people wouldn't get confused.