PoliticsPoliticsBank of Americastress-tests

What Could $33.9 Billion Buy You?

What Could $33.9 Billion Buy You?
Ryan Grim
By 

Former Washington Bureau Chief, HuffPost

The Treasury's stress test has reportedly determined that Bank of America will need another $33.9 billion in fresh capital to cushion itself against further economic downturn.

With more taxpayer money potentially bound for Wall Street, it's worth putting in perspective how much $33.9 billion is. Here are a few things that could be done with that amount of money. Send other suggestions to ryan@huffingtonpost.com or post them below. (Here's the federal budget.)

  • Children's health care. President Bush twice vetoed an expansion of S-CHIP, which would have covered an additional 4 million children at a cost of35 billion over five years.

  • Community health centers. An investment of35 billion to build and run more community health centers and to train badly-needed doctors and nurses would provide primary health care for all Americans, including the 60 million who now don't have access to physicians, and save billions of dollars in the long run by keeping people healthy and out of hospital emergency rooms.

  • Another Department of Education. The entire department ran on a46.2 billion budget in fiscal year 2009.

  • Three months in Iraq. The ongoing war in Iraq costs between two and three billion dollars a week.33.9 billion could fund around three months of occupation.

  • PBS. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which runs on about $400 million a year, is suffering greatly as the economic downturn leads to a decline in donations. The BofA money could fund it for almost a century.

  • A second Department of Justice. The entire DoJ runs on about25 billion a year.

  • Woodstock museums. The capital flew into a tizzy when Democratic New York Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer proposed earmarking a million dollars to build a Woodstock museum in upstate New York. With $33.9 billion you could build 33,900 such museums.

  • National Mall sodding. Republicans also made hay over a stimulus proposal to pay workers to re-sod the National Mall. The BofA money could put down grass once a year for the next 170 years.

    • Detailed budget numbers are to be released tomorrow, breaking down, for instance, how many children could be fed by an increase of how much funding for food stamps. Until then, what else could $33.9 billion buy? Email your ideas to submissions+bailout@huffingtonpost.com and we'll post them below. Be sure to include your name and where you're from.

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