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If 300,000,000 Americans discard 300,000,000 bulbs containing 0.005 grams of mercury every year that would result in 1,500 long tons (called "tonnes") of mercury being released into the environment every year.

Want to run those calcs again?
300,000,000 * 0.005 = 1,500,000 grams
1,500,000 grams = 1.5 tonnes.

Besides, 5 milligrams is high for current CFLs.

Our rulers are buffoons

Yes, they are...but at least they aren't off by three orders of magnitude! ;-)

Actually, fewer bulbs get discarded because of much longer lifespan...but that's only an additional order of magnitude, and not why your calculation is way off.

Plus, using the incandescents uses 75,000 gigawatt-hours more electricity per year. At more than 12 grams of mercury released by coal-fired plants per GWh, that's 900,000 grams (0.9 tonnes) more mercury being spewed into the environment per year just from the power usage of incandescents (four times the amount from using CFLs).

And note that it's not being contained in a leachate system--it's being spread over residential areas, etc.

And if anyone suggests those power plants keep their emissions on their own property (via emission controls), WHEW! You'll get to see who suddenly doesn't care about property rights when you suggest their cost of power might go up.