Last Friday the federal government almost shut down. Now, I’m not entirely sure what a government shutdown entails, but I’m fairly confident that it’s not a good thing. Even if our ever-swelling, bureaucratic beast of a government is fairly slow and lethargic, the phrase “government shutdown” seems frighteningly Orwellian.

The battle between Democrats and Republicans in Congress that almost led to the government shutdown was based, like so many other conflicts – political and otherwise on money. The economic recovery is sluggishly moving along, and this has highlighted several other issues regarding the country’s finances: most notably the nation’s deficit caused by growing federal expenditures.

Politicians are under immense pressure from their constituents to either positively impact the situation or pass the buck to their counterparts across the aisle. Accordingly, they argue for or against issues based on how many millions or billions or trillions of dollars they are going to cost American taxpayers. Naturally, voters and the media love it. No one wants to see his or her hard earned money, politely collected in the form of income tax, wasted on unworthy projects.

I want politicians held accountable. And I want to know how much of my paltry paycheck is going to support Planned Parenthood or to military contractors in Iraq or into a congressman’s pockets. But the problem is that the average American has no real perspective on what is a lot of money and what is a significant outflow for the federal government. Political rhetoric today is dominated by a mess of commas and zeros, and it’s a difficult one to sort through.

When most people hear that eliminating a government program or halting the passage of a bill in the Senate saved $50 million in taxpayer money, they say “Bravo, Boehner” or “Good going, Biden.” Never mind that $50 million is a rather insignificant figure in the grand scheme of federal spending. People are happy to hear that Democrats and Republicans, depending on which way they lean, are calling each other out and fighting for every dollar.

But throwing around raw figures like the cost of the U.S. involvement in Libya ($608 million) or the funding for No Child Left Behind ($12 billion in 2010) is not a constructive conversation. It reveals very little about the relative costs of these programs and operations. Instead, it allows talking heads and politicians to appeal to citizens’ emotions, and ignorance, by trumpeting their opposition to spending on anything they deem expendable or unfavorable.

Politicians could easily give percentages that capture a comparative snapshot and a more complete picture of federal spending. But there is no flash to that and sometimes succeeding in politics means making a scene and pretending little things matter more than they do.

Putting things in the perspective of percentages or comparisons is not the panacea to political rhetoric today. Believing it is can make nominal amounts of funding seem negligible, and this is surely a mistake. A lot of little things quickly add up to a big thing. The failure to realize this simple truth is part of the reason we’ve found ourselves in economic dire, faced with bloated federal budgets and on the brink of a government shutdown. But, in order to recover from this situation, we need a better understanding of the spending that led us here. That requires a large effort from politicians in easing rhetoric and offering a more honest explanation.

Greg Swiatek is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected]. Illustration by Jenna Fugate.