Those of us who are not paid $174,000 a year by the federal government are pretty much forced to live according to an up-to-date personal budget that balances income with outflow. Revolutionary thought.
Imagine that!
Those of us who don't follow those judicious guidelines get in all kinds of trouble from several different angles. Unlike, say, Congress and pretty much every president, who've spent us into a national debt quagmire of some $36,000,000,000,000.
The interest on all that borrowing, on average, is more than $2 Billion per day. But that must be OK — right? — because no one ever does anything about it except talk.
Japan holds the most U.S. debt ($1.1 Trillion) in reliably safe bonds, with China in second place ($749 Billion). Hopefully, Beijing doesn't decide to turn in those bonds because that sum is larger than our entire annual defense budget.
Such a set of basic financial rules apparently do not apply to Congress, whose leadership and members just gave us another embarrassing example of elected arrogance in the Swamp.
They were supposed to have a complete federal budget in place by Oct. 1, the beginning of a new fiscal year.
They didn't, of course.
Since then, instead of doing important, more enduring work for the country, they've been cobbling together short-term temporary budgets and squabbling over their contents. The perverse incentive for these political-theater acts is that there's a deadline, ceaselessly hyped by D.C. media gangs to prompt worried readers to click and watch.
And because the time for "deliberation" is short, members of Congress slip into each temporary budget all kinds of special and personal bills, hoping the haste will prohibit sober examination by colleagues and press. This, in turn, inflates the spending costs and the scale of the document, sometimes making the pile of paper up to two feet thick.
No one can judiciously read all that. Which is the whole point and why this expensive gamesmanship repeats itself time and time again throughout pretty much every year. With no adverse consequences for the play actors spending other peoples' money..
With Joe Biden sidelined by choice and absence of a functioning brain, President-soon-to-be Donald Trump stepped into the power void this time and scolded the Republican House into starting out with a more reasonable — and considerably smaller — short-term spending plan.
Wow, media phewed, that was really close to the deadline — the artificial one eagerly beloved by media beavers!
In this week's audio commentary, I have some thoughts on this perennially embarrassing charade.
Perhaps we should withhold congressional salaries every time the budget deadline is postponed so they can do their little dances. After listening to the tape here, feel free to share your thoughts on all this in the Comments below.
The most recent audio commentary looked at the passing of some iconic Christmas traditions.
This week's Sunday column seemed to strike a resonant chord with readers. It examined President-elect Trump's historic court victory over ABC News for defamation and the outlook for his professed plans to go after media for their lies.
Naturally, D.C. media goes into its armadillo mode, insisting that a politician is threatening democracy by attacking media that's being a vigilant watchdog only on one party.
Personally, I hope the cost of defending themselves and paying settlements (ABC's was $16 million) prompts some self-reflection and serious reforms in their professional practices.
I am hopeful. Not optimistic.
