Tim Kane wisely notes that we could have had a one-year payroll tax holiday for the cost of Obama’s fiscal stimulus program:

What’s amazing is that much of the rest of the bill’s stimulus does
not actually enter the economy until 2010, 2011, 2012 … you get the
idea. Even if you believe in government expenditures as stimulus – and
I do not – the timing problem is not solvable.

So guess what else 800 billion dollars could pay for? The total
revenues from all payroll taxes in a single year, by eerie coincidence,
equals just $800b

And in other news, if I had a billion dollars for every major missed policy opportunity in the last year, I’d have about $800B, too!