Congress: Theater of the absurd

Lest we forget, Congress and the president, in passing their debt-ceiling legislation, didn’t do one thing about the major problem plaguing America: lack of jobs.

It matters very little to the average American whether Social Security gets cut today, when they aren’t even working to pay into it in the first place. It matters even less that a deal was averted to raise taxes on the wealthy and well-connected, since most of the 25 million people unemployed today fit into neither category.

There was absolutely no mention of an extension of unemployment benefits, or even a government job-creation program (what ever happened to those “shovel-ready” projects?). Moreover, businesses still face uncertainty about the exact nature of budget cuts and/or tax increases that are likely to come out of the so-called “supercommittee,” and so they too are unlikely to begin hiring anytime soon.
 
There could have been many outcomes to this scene in our national drama, but ending the show without finishing the tale was probably the worst dramatic decision since the invention of soap operas. The politicians could have passed a real spending reduction. Or they could have passed a mixture of spending reductions and revenue increases. But to do neither and try to sell this to the American people as progress moves us out of the realm of mere drama and into the theater of the absurd.