07/08/01
‘Chump change’?
It was Everett McKinley Dirksen who said it. The Illinois senator
had the look and the sound of an elder statesman, even before
he became one. He was always eminently quotable, but never more
than when he rumbled, “A billion here and a billion there…pretty
soon you’re talking about real money.”
That’s not hard to understand. For the federal government, a billion
dollars (that’s a one with nine zeroes), is chump change. Petty
cash. Sofa-cushion stuff. You and I? Big money is anything with
more than one zero.
Big money—the government’s, and ours—and what to do with it is
news these days.
Printing presses in Washington are getting ready to churn out
those tax rebate checks we’ve all been lusting after (some of
us, anyway).
What are you gonna do with yours? Vacation, new car, college fund?
Hardly.
There’s no “big money” or windfall here. The families who will
see a $600 check fall out of their rebate envelope are those whom
it will impact the least.
Those who could really use it—the working poor, single parents
and the like—will see less. Much less.
Still, what to do with the money? After all, it’s something we
didn’t expect.
Before you plan on a couple of extra fill-ups at the gas station,
or lower the thermostat a few degrees on a hot day, consider what
Tom Gull has to say.
Gull, business manager of Ascension Parish in Oak Park, tells
of being in rural Wisconsin with a couple of retired folk. What
were they going to do with their money, Gull asked. The woman
harrumphed and offered this bit of wisdom: since it was “just
a drop in the bucket,” she said the feds might as well keep it
for some under-funded program.
Gull has an under-funded program in mind: his parish, or any other
parish. If you’re able, he suggests, don’t cash the check, but
sign it over to a local church or school and mark it as a donation
to be used solely for school purposes.
“It’s amazing to see,” he said, “how a drop in the bucket, generously
donated, can create a flood of improvements.
Now, that’s how small money does big things.
Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager
Send your comments to Tom
Top
