Praise the Lord. The Republic is saved. We have a debt ceiling deal. The high-paid helpers in Washington finally exercised their First Amendment rights and talked to each other. They hammered out a deal at the last minute. By the grace of God (or perhaps some other celestial from a warmer climate), the extinction level event became a “near miss,” rather than a Deep Impact.
Our fearless Secretary of the Treasury has been taking “extraordinary measures” to extend the debt ceiling deadline since January of this year. But her ability to sell “the checks in the mail” to the debt collectors was running out. Without the debt ceiling deal, the federal government would have been forced to take more than “extraordinary measures.” Extra-extraordinary measures would have been required – the seriousness of which was kept from the public to avoid panic.
The country always had enough dough to pay the vig on its debts. But there wasn’t enough cash to make the loan payments and pay for everything else on Washington’s shopping list. Luckily with authorization to borrow more, we won’t have to reduce our extraordinary spending to keep the debt collectors from hunting us down. Madame Secretary has been authorized to get some new credit cards (called US bonds) to keep making the minimum payments on the old credit cards (also US bonds). Problem solved – and without subjecting the subjects to the horrors of extra-extraordinary measures.
In recent months, we heard a lot about the approaching crisis, but we were never told what the extent of the damage could have been. They probably knew that we couldn’t possibly have coped with such information. I can imagine the voice of Jack Nicholson in a smoke-filled room screaming: They can’t handle the truth.
But now that the crisis is averted, we can talk about the unthinkable without triggering a run on ammunition and survival rations. The steps to avert crisis would have required layoffs among the people feeding at the public teat – gasp, the horror!
The Department of Defense employs 950,000 people and funds countless contractors. They spend their time surrendering to lightly armed goat herders, purging masculine toxicity from our warrior class, ensuring that new systems are not fielded until their technology is obsolete, and making multi-billion-dollar accounting errors.
The Department of Homeland Security employs 260,000 people. They mostly spend their time handing out welcome packages to illegal aliens and providing travel vouchers to their preferred destinations.
The Department of Justice employs 115,000 people. They are perhaps the busiest people in government service. They are prosecuting the guy that put his feet on San Fran Nan’s desk, tracking down the elusive white supremacist domestic terrorists, prosecuting pro-life 1st Amendment practitioners, censoring the public expression of dangerous opinions, planning political hoaxes, hiding government scandals, and protecting a boy’s right to use the girl’s bathroom. I’m not sure where that last “right” is in the Constitution, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is looking for a penumbra now. The DOJ probably needs more people – that’s a lot on its plate.
The Department of the Treasury employs 100,000 people. They mostly provide FDIC-insured banks with a path to failure, audit the taxes of people who are rich enough to pay taxes but too poor to afford attorneys, and are buying guns and ammo like office supplies. Treasury employees will also be taking out those new loans they’ve been authorized for. That will keep them busy for a few years.
The Department of Health and Human Services employs 80,000 people. They are dedicated people working to field the next pandemic virus, ensuring the continued profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, and paying people to not work.
The Department of the Interior employs 70,000 people. Its staff charges us to use the parks we paid for and uses its mandate to provide clean air to change the weather. As part of its “weather control” initiative, it works to keep energy reserves out of the hands of evil climate deniers. Interior employees are ensuring that when mankind is extinct, we will have left the planet better than we found it – as good campers should.
The Department of State employs 69,000 people. All are essential to the mismanagement of relations with any nation friendly to the US, funding the UN’s hostilities with the US, and starting the next war necessary to keep the US military-industrial complex coffers full.
The Department of Transportation employs 55,000 people. Under its current leadership, the department has undergone a major realignment, diverting resources away from air and railway safety, to more strategically important endeavors. Its staff of highly professional public servants is dedicated to making our highways less racist and finding new ways to tax us for the miles we drive on the roads we paid for.
In summary, extra-extraordinary measures would have meant downsizing among our most essential public servants. It would have prevented Washington, DC from remaining the one US city immune from economic downturns.
How could we possibly allow that to happen? Why, we’d have to run government finances like a family budget – something politicians are woefully unprepared for. I’m not sure they have the intellectual capacity to balance competing requirements and prioritize expenditures for “needs” and “wants.” They might have to choose between combat training and pronoun training for our professional warriors. I’m not sure how that would affect combat readiness, but it wouldn’t be good – so the generals claim.
As you lie in bed tonight, say a quiet prayer of thanks to whatever deity you prefer. It’s not the end of the world as we know it. Washington, DC will still be there tomorrow.
This absurdity will never be corrected by the three branches of our federal government. It will only be corrected when we take charge again. Our state governments give us the means and Article V of the Constitution gives us the power to do so.
