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As the chart on the right shows, The Trillion Dollar Debt Plan passed by the House last night surpasses even the inflation adjusted spending increases of the New Deal. To put this in perspective, Shanea Watkins and Patrick Tyrrell have crunched the numbers to look at what the 78,425,000 family households in the United States would have to give up, if the federal government had to borrow this money from its own citizens:

These amounts account for a large portion of the goods and services that families spend their money on annually. According to the 2007 Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), families are spending:

* $2,330 on apparel and services,
* $3,595 on health care,
* $4,322 on food at home, and
* $11,657 annually on shelter.

If all families were asked to equally shoulder the burden of the $825 billion stimulus package, it would be like asking them to take on an amount of debt equivalent to what they spend on food, clothing, and health care or most of what they spend on shelter for an entire year.