That's $700 new. You can buy a refurbed Mini from Apple for $469 right now that comes with a warranty. If you expand your buying options to second-hand hardware out of warranty, you can pick up older but Lion capable C2D Macbooks for less than $300. If you're really hard up for cash, you can even build Lion-capable Hackintoshes for a little under $250.
You're forgetting the red tape that comes along with government agencies in bringing in non-standard tools and in submitting purchase requests. There's a lot more to it than pulling out your cash to buy something that's pretty much going to be a paperweight outside of mobile development use in an environment that's mostly windows based.
