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PK does the math:
Let’s say the administration finds $100 million in efficiencies every working day for the rest of the Obama administration’s first term. That’s still around $80 billion, or around 2% of one year’s federal spending.Which is why it's smart for Obama to wrest some headlines by promising $100 million in efficiencies. He's playing on the electorate's inability to distinguish types of "illions." Most people will never see a million dollars. Fewer will see $10 million. $100 million is getting into unimaginable sums. It's the rare human being who can really conceptualize a billion dollars. And trillions? That's a joke, right? The government thinks on the scale of aggregate national income. Voters think on the scale of individual income. You can get away with a lot of mischief exploiting the vast distance between the two. Cutting a program with $100 million is much easier, and no less politically rewarding, than cutting a program worth $2 billion. I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if the $100 million means more to the voter than the $2 billion, if only because the former has the word hundred" in front of it. Some enterprising political neuroscientist could do a neat experiment on this by hooking a voter to a brain scanner and playing different quotes on cutting waste.
