9/84Amount spent by the University of Alabama on athletics in the last academic year: $7,069,000
10/85Budget per episode of Miami Vice: $1,500,000
Budget of the Miami vice squad unit in 1984: $1,161,741
7/85Foreign aid budget of the Soviet Union in 1978: $3,500,000,000
11/86Percentage of the $2.1 billion federal antidrug budget that goes to law enforcement: 69
That goes to educational programs: 1
6/86Amount the Reagan Administration has budgeted for military bands in 1987: $154,200,000
Amount it has budgeted for the National Endowment for the Arts: $144,900,000
8/86Percentage of the proposed 1987 Star Wars budget that is allocated for “demonstration projects”: 58
1/87Pages in the published transcripts of Congressional hearings on the 1986 defense budget: 11,246
11/87Amount the Pentagon budgeted for Star Wars research in 1987: $3,500,000,000
Amount it budgeted for basic technology research for the Army, Navy, and Air Force: $3,233,000,000
4/87Value of the assets seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1986: $378,814,291
Budget of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1986: $377,775,000
5/87Amount the Reagan Administration budgeted for the production of chemical weapons in 1987: $158,650,000
Amount it budgeted for the destruction of existing chemical weapons in 1987: $620,100,000
8/87Percentage increase in South Africa’s 1988 defense budget: 30
4/88Percentage change, since 1981, in federal funds budgeted for subsidized housing: -81
6/88Portion of the defense budget it would take to lift every American family over the poverty line for one year: 1/9
6/88Portion of the Pentagon’s 1986 budget for weapons and R&D that was classified: 1/7
8/88Funds budgeted by the Republican National Committee for negative research on Michael Dukakis: $500,000
Funds budgeted by the Democratic National Committee for negative research on George Bush: $250,000
1/89Federal funds budgeted to move the Reagans out of the White House: $1,250,000
11/89Rank of drugs, among the “gravest domestic threats facing our nation,” according to President Bush: 1
New antidrug funds proposed by the Bush administration, expressed as a percentage of the federal budget: .065
3/89Estimated number of countries in which foreign aid accounts for more than a quarter of the national budget: 40
4/89Portion of U.S. government revenue in 1989 that will come from Social Security taxes: 1/4
Percentage increase in the 1989 U.S. budget deficit if Social Security funds are not counted as revenue: 35
Ratio today: 1:31
11/90Percentage of the Department of Energy’s proposed 1991 R&D budget that would be spent on defense: 42
3/90Percentage of Israel’s 1989 defense budget that was spent to combat the intifada: 4
4/90Number of years since the balanced-budget bill became law in 1985 that its deficit-reduction targets have been met: 0
8/90Federal funds spent on drug-rehabilitation programs for state and local prison inmates last year: $2,000,000
Federal funds budgeted for these programs this year: 0
4/92Amount President Bush proposes to spend on construction of new public housing in 1993: 0
Percentage of all spending the President proposes for the next five years that will come from Pentagon budget cuts: 0.6
9/92Amount the Bush re-election campaign has budgeted for focus groups this year: $1,000,000
10/93Change in funding for the Star Wars defense system in the 1994 budget: -$669,795,000
Change in funding for ground-based-missile defense systems in the 1994 budget: +$704,976,000
11/93Ratio of the U.N.’s 1993 peacekeeping budget in Somalia to its 1993 peacekeeping budget in the former Yugoslavia: 3:2
4/93Number of months since budget cuts at the Bureau of Labor Statistics eliminated government tracking of layoffs: 8
5/93Amount President Clinton has proposed cutting from the budget of the CIA: 0
6/93Amount by which the 1994 Pentagon budget exceeds the 1975 Pentagon budget, in constant dollars: $32,100,000,000
6/93Estimated portion of the 1994 Pentagon budget that is devoted to defending against the former Soviet Union: 1/2
7/93Percentage change in federal spending on natural resources and the environment in the President’s 1994 budget: -5
10/95Ratio of the annual budget of the National Endowment for the Arts to the cost of producing Waterworld: 1:1
11/95Federal funds budgeted through 1999 to assist US. phone companies in making their lines easier to tap: $500,000,000
12/95Amount the U.S. government budgeted this year for aid to U.S. workers laid off as a result of NAFTA: $43,400,000
Number of workers approved for such aid this year: 42,172
4/95Number of years O.J. Simpson’s trial would have to last before his legal fees exceeded this year’s federal budget: 348,985
4/95Ratio of this year’s federal budget to the average annual budget during World War 11, in 1995 dollars: 2:1
4/95Amount of this year’s defense budget that the General Accounting Office cites as not “adequately justified”: $6,800,000,000
4/95Change since last year in federal funds budgeted for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: +$19,675,000
Percentage of the federal budget that actually is: 1
9/95Ratio of Harvard University’s annual budget to the GDP of Rwanda: 1:1
1/96Percentage change since 1993 in the Pentagon’s recruitment advertising budget: +72
2/96Number of bloodhounds used by House Democrats last fall to “trail Republicans” holding a closed budget meeting: 3
4/96Change, since budget talks began last fall, in the number of known galaxies in the universe: +40,000,000,000
8/96Annual amount by which Wisconsin’s new mandatory workfare plan will outspend its old welfare budget: $102,000,000
8/96Percentage change in the size of the annual U.S. budget deficit since Bill Clinton took office: -50
Percentage of budget cuts to entitlements made by the 104th Congress that will come from those programs: 93
4/97Number of “difficult, detailed” government-program cuts President Clinton says his new budget contains: 238
Percentage of these his budget director declared too “boring” to list for reporters at a February press conference: 100
4/97Ratio of last year’s federal budget to what Americans would earn if paid the minimum wage for watching TV: 1.3:1
7/97Ratio of the budget of the film Volcano to the property damage caused by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helen’s: 1:1
9/97Average amount the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost: $11,850,000,000
1/98Number of years of legal action it took to get the CIA to release the annual US. intelligence budget last October: 30
12/98Funding that Congress allocated in this year’s budget for military programs not requested by the Pentagon: $1,229,000,000
2/98Ratio of NBC’s budget for the next season of ER to the annual budget of New York’s Bellevue Hospital: 1:1
6/98Amount by which NASA is over budget on its international space station: $3,900,000,000
8/98Percentage by which India expects to increase the budget of its Department of Atomic Energy in the next year: 59
10/99Number of years since 1997’s Balanced Budget Act set discretionary spending caps that spending has not exceeded them: 0
11/99Amount by which the President ‘s ten-year defense budget exceeds that of House Democrats: $158,000,000
Amount by which it exceeds that of House Republicans: $206,000,000
2/99Number of S&Ls or shareholder groups seeking damages from the government over its handling of the 1980s bailout: 120
Estimated amount by which the awards sought will exceed the bailout’s original $165 billion cost: $50,000,000,000
3/99Average amount each American living in poverty would receive if 1998’s budget surplus were divided among them: $1,967
3/00Ratio of the combined value of AOL and Time Warner last January 11 to the annual budget of France: 4:3
9/00Factor by which homeowners’ deductions claimed by Americans last year exceed the budget of HUD: 3
1/01Percentage of the U.S. budget devoted to foreign developmental aid in 1962 and 2000, respectively: 3, 0.5
1/01Percentage of the G-8 countries’ combined military budgets it would take to halve the world’s TB cases by 2010: 0.4
5/01Factor by which the cost of China’s Three Gorges Dam is expected to exceed its original $4.5 billion budget: 16
Estimated number of people who will be displaced by the dam’s construction: 1,900,000
8/01Federal funds budgeted this year for cleanup of the Defense Department’s hazardous waste: $7,460,000,000
Number who have returned home since then: 1,500,000
4/02Minutes before the President spoke at a jobs program last winter that protesters heard the event had been canceled: 10
Days later that he presented a budget proposal cutting the funding of such programs by 80 percent: 30
4/02Ratio of the President’s proposed increase in U.S. military spending to China’s total military budget in 2000: 1:1
6/02Factor by which the Bush Administration’s budget proposal in February increased federal funding to fight bioterrorism: 4
7/02Military budget of Israel in 1967 expressed as a percentage of the budgets of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria combined: 58
11/03Percentage by which the Defense Department proposed cutting its budget this year by closing its Peacekeeping Institute: 0.001
Ratio of the institute’s budget to the estimated price of Jennifer Lopez’s engagement ring: 3:4
4/03Pounds of grits and other grains to be donated to fill this year’s food-budget gap at the South Carolina governor’s mansion: 1,000
4/03Amount budgeted last year for the EPA’s Leaking Underground Storage Tank Program: $72,000,000
8/03Ratio of Iran’s military budget to the amount spent by the Pentagon since last fall for “increased worldwide posture”: 1:1
8/03Amount the Defense Department has lost track of, according to a 2000 report by its inspector general: $1,100,000,000,000
This amount to the rest of the world’s military budgets combined: 2:1
1/04Percentage change since 1994 in the annual budget of the U.N.’s Balkan war-crimes tribunal: +780
6/04Amount that next year’s Defense Department budget proposal requests for researching low-yield nuclear weapons: $9,000,000
Number of years that such research was illegal before Congress repealed the ban last November: 10
10/05Number of “veterans of the global war on terrorism ” that the VA budget assumed for 2005: 23,553
Estimated number today: 103,000
4/06Estimated ratio this year of the U.S. defense budget to that of the rest of the world combined: 1:1
5/06Ratio of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1948, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war: 1:1
1/07Annual budget of Miami’s police department, expressed as a percentage of the production cost of the film Miami Vice: 83
9/07Percentage of the U.S. Forest Service budget in 1991 and today, respectively, designated for firefighting: 13, 43
9/07Projected cost to Medicare in 2030 of treating dementia, expressed as a percentage of the program’s total budget today: 98
7/08Amount of the federal budget that John McCain says he could cut in a “New York minute”: $100,000,000,000
7/08Projected annual budget of the enlarged cabinet, as a portion of Kenya’s total government revenues: 1/8