Word: item
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Proponents claim that the appropriated funds could create up to 400,000 jobs in fiscal 1983. The largest single item, a supplemental $1.25 billion in fiscal 1983 for community development, is intended to produce 80,000 jobs in light construction. Other big-ticket jobs boosters: $200 million for the Economic Development Administration (which Reagan had hoped to abolish), $202 million for small-business loans, $200 million for rural water and sewer grants, and $100 million for summer jobs for youths. Also included in the final bill was about $375 million in humanitarian aid, including $100 million for a food program...
...ITEM: The Army decided to build a light antitank bazooka at a cost of about $75 each. But once all the designers and program directors had finished tinkering, the weapon ended up costing $787. Even so, it would be hard pressed to knock out a modern Soviet tank. Reason: its shell cannot pierce the tank's forward armor. Congress tried to kill the project, but there is still money for it buried in the Pentagon budget...
...ITEM: Allowing for inflation, the Army is spending the same amount of money ($2 billion in 1983 dollars) on new tanks as it did 30 years ago, toward the end of the Korean War. But the number of tanks produced has declined by 90%, from 6,735 to 701. In 1951, 6,300 fighter planes were funded by the military at a cost in 1983 dollars of $7 billion. The U.S. is now spending $11 billion to build only 322 planes, 95% fewer than...
...ITEM: The Navy is budgeting for six new ships this year. To afford them, it is mothballing 22 older ships, many of which were recently overhauled, because it must cut operating and maintenance costs. For the same reason, it is reducing the sailing time of its ships by 10% from 1982 to 1984. With its net loss of 16 ships, the Navy would appear to be sailing full speed astern in its effort to build a 600-ship fleet...
Maybe Harvard can claim more Noble Prize recipients than any other university in the country, but the award for developing an item of "real value" may go to a Princeton professor-turned-inventor, creator of what he claims is the world's first "mathematically perfect" tennis racket...