Fifty billion dollars. It's the kind of number that shows up in headlines, gets debated for a few days, then disappears. What does it actually mean?

Robert breaks down the tradeoffs we rarely talk about. Fifty billion could fund school lunches for 30 million kids for nearly three years. It could pay for Head Start for four years straight. 

It covers about a week of intensive military operations. 

The question isn't which choice is "right" but it's whether we're even framing these as tradeoffs at all.

Topics: federal spending, guns vs butter, school lunch program, Head Start, budget tradeoffs, opportunity cost