Is the Debt Crisis Over?
At the 11th hour, lawmakers from both parties finally, and hastily, put together a compromise that raised the borrowing limit and cut some spending, enough to tide the creditors over for a few more months. While these recent developments may end the tide of expletives directed at Congressmen, they still beg the question, “Where will we be in several months?” The answer? Right back where we started, expletives and all.
On an
average day, most Americans don’t care what goes on in Congress. We’re more worried about kids and jobs and mortgages. But when we perceive something to go wrong in government, we become obsessed. We tweet angry messages about our Representatives and allow government to interrupt our regular network programming (Right when the Bachelorette was about to make yet another difficult decision, President Obama interrupted her to tell us that the government was still incapable of difficult decisions. How ironic. At least there’s hope for love).Yes, default would have affected our daily lives, to an extent. There were plenty of stories this week about cities and citizens losing federal grant and entitlement money. But I think the real reason we become so upset when lawmakers create stalemates is that we still believe government is about compromise. We don’t understand how all officials missed the kindergarten lesson about sharing.
What Twitter doesn’t tell you is that the Constitution prevents a lot of sharing. The Founders encouraged a system of divided government to avoid tyrannical majority rule. It’s supposed to be difficult. And not to be cynical, but we the voters also prevent sharing. We want our lawmakers to legislate based on principles and not based on the next election. There’s only one problem; those principles must be our principles. That’s why we elected them, to represent our interests. And as every American had a different opinion on what a compromise should look like, so too did every Congressman. See the vicious cycle we’ve created?
So in a few months, when this problem occurs afresh, maybe we shouldn’t get mad at our Congressman. Maybe we should get mad at ourselves. Or the Founders. Here’s hoping they knew what they were doing.
On an
average day, most Americans don’t care what goes on in Congress. We’re more worried about kids and jobs and mortgages. But when we perceive something to go wrong in government, we become obsessed. We tweet angry messages about our Representatives and allow government to interrupt our regular network programming (Right when the Bachelorette was about to make yet another difficult decision, President Obama interrupted her to tell us that the government was still incapable of difficult decisions. How ironic. At least there’s hope for love).Yes, default would have affected our daily lives, to an extent. There were plenty of stories this week about cities and citizens losing federal grant and entitlement money. But I think the real reason we become so upset when lawmakers create stalemates is that we still believe government is about compromise. We don’t understand how all officials missed the kindergarten lesson about sharing.
What Twitter doesn’t tell you is that the Constitution prevents a lot of sharing. The Founders encouraged a system of divided government to avoid tyrannical majority rule. It’s supposed to be difficult. And not to be cynical, but we the voters also prevent sharing. We want our lawmakers to legislate based on principles and not based on the next election. There’s only one problem; those principles must be our principles. That’s why we elected them, to represent our interests. And as every American had a different opinion on what a compromise should look like, so too did every Congressman. See the vicious cycle we’ve created?
So in a few months, when this problem occurs afresh, maybe we shouldn’t get mad at our Congressman. Maybe we should get mad at ourselves. Or the Founders. Here’s hoping they knew what they were doing.
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