300,000,000

And the quote of the day is:

"Census Bureau employees planned to mark the moment Tuesday afternoon with cake and punch."

At 7:46 am EST today, the US population officially passed the 300,000,000 mark. The NY Times marked the occassion in this article.

I think it's interesting to note that the Bush Administration isn't really planning on doing much to celebrate. This is in contrast to the celebration Pres. Johnson pulled together after the 200,000,000 baby was born in 1967. I particularly enjoyed reading some of the reasons for why the current administration is so nonchalant about the whole thing, the primary one being that the US population probably exceeded 300 million several months ago (what with all the illegal immigrants living in the country) and it probably won't help the Republicans in the upcoming elections to make note of something that just highlights the US' inability to create any significant immigration policy to manage illegals. (I'm not going to go into my political stance on illegal immigrants today - although it's probably not too terribly difficult to figure it out with a little bit of thought.)

Here are a couple of other things to ponder:

- If the 300,000,000 person was indeed a new born baby, the baby would have probably been a boy (because slightly more boys are conceived and born than girls. Girls only start to outnumber boys around the teenage years) and most likely hispanic (because they are the fastest growing segment of the population.)

- The US population is growing at a rate of just less than 1%. Immigration accounts for about 40% of that growth. The remainder is from births outnumbering deaths. I wonder what will happen when the baby boomers start to pass away. This is in contrast to most European countries and Japan, all of which have negative population growth.

- While the current administration tucked away $20 million in the Iraq war budget for a victory celebration, they can't tuck away $50 for a 300 millionth population celebration?

Let's all make up for Bush's oversight and be like the census bureau employees. Bring on the punch and cake!