The recently announced sale of federally owned Citigroup shares left many politicians salivating over the extra walking around cash they felt in their pocket. Problem is that tiny blip of revenue is just a dim bright spot in a Treasury balance sheet that is swimming in red ink.

Leaving aside the actual budget deficit – pegged to be $1.5 trillion this fiscal year – the bailout isn’t a bank account at the Treasury available to be spent on whatever economic initiative Congress or the Administration decides to pursue.

Part of the problem is with the kitchen sink approach of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) – aka the bailout – itself. Despite the title, the program did just about everything but buy troubled assets. It went a completely different direction and the relatively loose legislative underpinnings were contorted to address a variety of economic challenges. A large portion of the program was directed at bolstering banks, supporting the auto industry, investing in AIG, propping up money market funds, and helping the home lending sector. As of February, Treasury estimated that when all is said and done – TARP will cost taxpayers $117 billion.

But, the number lawmakers remember is $700 billion – that’s the “nice round number” that Treasury officials conjured “out of the air” and got Congress to pony up for TARP. Problem is taxpayers were told we were just fronting the cash and that most if not all of it was going to come back to the Treasury. So there is no piggy bank, no revolving fund, and no pot of gold for pet initiatives. Efforts to tap TARP repayments for jobs programs or other expenditures are really just adding spending insult to fiscal injury. That’s not to say some of these initiatives shouldn’t go forward. It’s just that Congress should fully consider the legislation and find spending cuts or revenue raisers to pay for them.

In the last week the Administration announced a couple initiatives related to TARP. First, they announced that the Home Affordable Mortgage Program would be modified to enable more homeowners to take advantage. Because under the previous iteration very little ($60 million) of the $50 billion allocated has been spent, this isn’t shifting TARP money to something else and is just a modification of an existing program. So it didn’t raid the TARP piggy bank.

The other announcement caused a bit more of a splash. Treasury announced intentions to sell the 7.7 billion shares of Citigroup stock in the government’s portfolio. Taxpayers own more than a quarter of the company and at current stock prices would receive $33 billion, netting as much as $8 billion on the sale. Even though the sale would be structured over a long period, so the share price may take a bit of a dip as the market is flooded with Citigroup stock, taxpayers are going to make a bit of coin.

You can almost see the dollar signs in lawmakers’ eyes. But remember, TARP isn’t a money-maker by any margin. Whether you believe the bailout was necessary or not, at the end of the day, it will have cost more than $100 billion. So the idea that there is any savings or extra cash lying around is pure fiction. TARP expires in October; the cost to taxpayers will extend far beyond that date.