$2,000,000,000

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 16.

$2,000,000,000.—The United States Congress that has just passed out of existence—the Fifty-seventh—is the first Congress to appropriate for all purposes more than two billion dollars. The Fifty-fifth—just two Congresses ago—was the first to appropriate more than one billion in its two sessions. In four years, congressional appropriations have jumped from $1,000,000,000 to $2,000,000,000. After the statement summarized above, the New York World remarks: “If it [$2,000,000,000 expenditure] can be justified, and shown to be anything like the necessary and normal amount that future Congresses must appropriate, it marks a new epoch in our National Government. It implies an annual budget larger, in proportion to our population and wealth, than that of any other government in the world.”