Word: trillion
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...seed for Sunday night's clash over space weapons was planted-almost casually in March 1983. Partly as a way of selling his proposed $2 trillion, five-year military buildup, President Reagan called on U.S. scientists to "give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." This would be done by erecting, in effect, an impregnable missileproof bubble over America. Enemy ICBMs would be zapped by a wizardly array of defensive weapons well before they entered U.S. skies. The idea quickly became known as Reagan's Star Wars plan...
...Democratic House completed its chores, and most of its members scurried out of Washington. The Republican Senate convened for the final formalities, including an affectionate farewell tribute to retiring Majority Leader Howard Baker. All that remained was to raise the national debt ceiling by $251 billion, to $1.824 trillion, since the old limit would otherwise be surpassed. But then Democratic Senators balked. Long berated by Republicans for raising the debt limits in previous Administrations, the Democrats sought revenge. They demanded a roll-call vote, knowing that so many Republican Senators had left town that the bill could not be passed...
...most important bits of business that Congress left unfinished last week was lifting the federal debt ceiling, which already stands at a Himalayan height of $1.57 trillion. Without a higher debt limit, the U.S. Treasury could lose its license to borrow and have a serious cash-flow problem beginning as early as this week. That prospect is unthinkable for a free-spending Government that even by optimistic Administration projections will chalk up a deficit of $166.9 billion in fiscal 1985, which began...
...nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that unless Congress acts to narrow it, the budget gap will widen steadily, reaching $263 billion in 1989. By that time, the national debt would hit $2.5 trillion. The annual interest bill on that debt, says the CBO, could amount to $214 billion and absorb 16% of all Government spending, up from...
Although such objects are as far as 10 trillion miles away, they clearly can effect the earth. If the solar system passed through the Oort cloud, a bombardment of comets would shake loose. Even if a small fraction of them made contact with the earth, the impact would blow enough debris into the atmosphere to cut off sunlight and cause a cosmic winter, ultimately extinguishing most of the life on the planet...