Not surprisingly, the cost of a typical visit to the vet has also ballooned.
That cost has now ballooned to more than $2 billion.
But by April 2013, the total estimated cost had ballooned to $40 billion.
The cost of New York's program, however, has been ballooning at an alarming rate.
Over the last decade the cost for the scholarship has ballooned substantially.
By 2005 the cost had ballooned to $5.3 billion for 1.1 million.
Two years later, costs had ballooned to $86 million - and the work was still not done.
Meanwhile, the costs of developing the site ballooned to $1.6 million from some $500,000.
By the end, its costs had ballooned from the earliest estimates of $70 million to a staggering $5.5 billion.
By the time the building was completed in 2008, the final cost had ballooned to roughly $49 million.