The Obama Administration and Congress: Children at Play

As parents watch children play, they sometimes notice that the games have gone from light roughhouse to serious violence. Someone has to step in and exert some control before the weaker children are injured. That's what adults do when dealing
with children who lack the internal controls needed to get along in society.

One gets the same feeling in watching the current frenetic activity of government: trying to reform the health care system, solve the problem of energy usage, prop up the banking system, the car manufacturers, and the economy as a whole, deal with tobacco usage and obesity — — an endless list of things the Senators and Congressmen object to.

There must be adults somewhere in the political system who can say, "Time out!" You can't do these things. You simply cannot produce enough electricity with solar and wind to achieve the goals of the administration and the Congress. You can't make everything come out the way you want it to. If people don't want to borrow, you can't make banks lend to them. If people don't want to buy cars, or houses, you can't make them buy.

One would like to think that both parties in Congress would say,
"Let's stop playing games. Let's stop deluding ourselves. We can't
afford the luxury of spending trillions of taxed or borrowed dollars just to make us feel good about ourselves."

Perhaps the worst thing that ever happened in this country is that the government decided to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade of the 60s and actually succeeded. Since then, any expensive, risky project that has been proposed has been supported by saying, "If we can put a man on the moon, we can do X." It isn't true. We cannot eliminate a trillion dollar deficit by cutting 170 million dollars in spending, cuts that everyone knows will not be made anyway. We can't make costly changes in the world at no cost.

Where are the grown-ups in this country? Are they going to let the children destroy it? When will they step in and say, "Time out!"