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Obama's moon mission

Posted at 12:28 PM on April 13, 2011 by Bob Collins
Filed under: Politics

President Barack Obama is announcing his plans this afternoon for reducing the national debt by $4 trillion over the next 12 years. That's far short of the $5 trillion targeted by Republicans.

$4 trillion? $5 trillion? What's it all mean?

Under Obama's plan, $4 trillion off the debt works out to $333 billion a year.

Check this chart from the Web site, usgovernmentspending.com. The estimated spending was to increase by almost $290 billion a year through 2016:

In many ways, Obama's target is more aggressive than President Kennedy's promise to put men on the moon within 10 years, even though the U.S. had absolutely no clear clue how to do that. In 2010 dollars, the entire program mission $188 billion.