And, as Republican Mitch McConnell so creatively asserted during the recent stimulus bill debate, "If you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldn't have spent $1 trillion." Which, even the faithful might admit, is nearly enough money to corrupt God.

These are cute examples, but still far too abstract.

How about this: If you wanted to use a protractor (my preferred method of calculation), the thing would have to be 75 stories high and 1 mile wide -- a claim that probably holds as much veracity as any of the above examples, though I made it out of whole cloth.

Maybe we need to think smaller then. So let's think about Obama's recently unveiled federal budget, which comes in at about $3.6 trillion. Also, let's take this moment to talk about the myth that George W. Bush heartlessly cut spending while in office, when he did the exact opposite -- in almost every area. Bush's budget grew from $2 trillion to $3.1 trillion during his presidency, or, adjusted for inflation, more money than is spent on your average war.

Now we have Obama's $3.6 trillion budget and his $1.75 trillion deficit, which supposedly will level out at about $700 billion a year in the future.

My meticulous calculations tell me that every American citizen will be on the hook for … a lot .

But the most important question we should be asking is nonmathematical: How many times has reckless spending in Washington made government more productive, responsive or moral?

I'm not sure what the formula is on that one, but the answer is zero. It's exceedingly possible that none of these numbers is close to being correct.