Yeah, what else is new. Does anyone know how much $53.8 billion in cigarette taxes is over ten years? (0.16 percent of projected revenue, an average of $16 per person.) How about cost saving of $157 billion in Medicare over the next decade? (It's around 3 percent of the projected Medicare budget over this period.) And we wonder why the public has no idea of where their budget dollars are going.
--Dean Baker