The days are dragging, long and heavy, and the heat hasn’t made things easier. And I don’t have much to complain about: where my side of the Hill has been marking time with a vote here, a vote there, my brethren in the House have been working late nights and long bills for weeks. But the biggest legislative challenge still lies ahead. Markets watch with skeptical eye, constituents holler, and cable news capitalizes on the hollering of their constituency of choice. They make the voices louder and oversimplify so the choices seem clearer than they really are. And no one is willing to speak the truth: that if we do this right, everyone will feel like they’ve lost. That’s not what people want to hear.
Tempers have been made even shorter than usual by heat. It’s not that soaring temperatures and oppressive humidity are anything new for the city by the Potomac – that’s a staple of every summer season here. Thing is, the usual afternoon thunderstorms that bring reprieve and much needed rain simply aren’t forming this year. The ground itself is languishing. And the rain we have received has been violent, sudden, and the baked soil can’t take it.
Through my lens, a glass that’s half-beltway, half-reality, it’s a metaphor of what it happening to the nation. Times are hard, harder than any talking head is really ready to admit, and there are those who want to help. But I see them being worn down by those who can’t see it, or don’t know it. I watch goalposts being moved, which fouls up schedules and forces people to break promises. And that wears on anyone. Say what you will about public officials, but an awful lot of them make sacrifices – think redeye flights twice a week and not showing up to much anticipated events they promised to kids and constituents – that would wear down anyone.
It’s not an excuse, but it’s some small part of the why of what you’re seeing on the news – imperfect people working under incredibly stressful conditions to solve major financial issues largely created by their predecessors’ failure to make tough decisions and Americans’ downright naivety for believing anyone who tells them they can have everything they want and no one has to pay for it.
We reap what we sow, and this is a bitter harvest.
But the clock ticks regardless of regret. No one knows what happens next, which is what makes everyone so darn unsettled in this mess. The debt ceiling has always been increased – it’s been done at least a handful of times during my tenure on the Hill without fanfare. But what if enough legislators refuse to do so unless certain conditions are met – really refuse, not the public-denial-until-the-eleventh-hour- Stupak-crumble we’re used to seeing in politicians?
Maybe we will have reached a new era of American politics. Maybe we will find out if the country wants fundamental change in the federal government, entitlements and all, or whether we just like talking about fiscal responsibility because it makes us feel good so long as no sacrifice is required on our part.
Maybe….
