I'm sorry, Senator, but you just can't afford a Kindle.

Eighteen months ago there were lots of social welfare [projects] that Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or Bill Richardson) could have embraced to endear himself to Democratic Party primary voters except advisers would come back and say "Senator, that'll cost $350 [billion] over ten years--we can't do it." But it's a much smaller number than $2.5 trillion.

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