A Little Something to Stimulate Your Interest

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), a stalwart friend of free markets and small government in Congress, got curious about the costs of borrowing all those hundreds of billions in stimulus bucks. Being a congressman, he's lucky enough to have the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) at his disposal to do any and all hard math he requires for his congressional duties.

And what did the CBO find?: The debt service alone from the stimulus will cost about $347 billion over the next 10 years. As the letter (read the whole thing here [PDF]) dryly notes: "Such costs are not included in CBO's cost estimates for individual pieces of legislation and are not counted for Congressional scorekeeping purposes."

Yep. That's $347 billion in interest. Stimulating indeed.