There is a negotiation of sorts involving the budget going on in various undisclosed locations around Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, none of these venues include restaurants, resulting in food being first “sent out for” from offices and then “sent in” to those offices. This looks like a metaphor for a successful series of talks, the “out” ultimately meeting the “in” at a place called “The Middle,” a famous but secret location noted for its reasonableness.
In point of fact, this kind of delivery from eatery to conference rooms initiates the least agreeable meeting between food and the human body. Food gets piled up and participants wrestle to find the right packages. Meals are eaten in bad moods. They are eaten hurriedly. They are eaten in a weird staggered pace guaranteeing that no two interlocutors ever face each other in the relaxed eat-a-little-talk-a-little give-and-take rhythm that characterizes the business lunch. Instead of the good faith and good will engendered by breaking bread, we get the bad faith and ill will engendered by breaking spirits, breaking backs and breaking heads. Doing all this while broke is not conducive.
This weird way of doing math leads to an awful aftermath. The sour taste leads to dour moods. The sides suddenly announce they are “further apart than ever.” This means that each individual compromise reached yesterday has now been retroactively invalidated. “I only agreed to give up that trillion yesterday, after that delicious crepe, but today after this corned beef that seemed a little off, I demand that trillion back, plus an extra trillion for the pack of Tums I had to buy.”
I know some readers think this is comedy, and I am flattered that they credit me for the humor, but, in fact, it hews way too close to the truth.
Many of us would like to be a “fly on the wall” to witness this process, but, in fact, as it drags on, the undiscarded half-consumed detritus of progressively crankier bouts of food binging draws the flies from the wall to the globs and clumps of yummy insect fare. The pesky insects do nothing to lighten or brighten the moods of the negotiators.
Attorneys like to say that the only good compromise is when both sides are frustrated. This is actually a redundant statement when it pertains to government budgeting because the food situation eventually irritates both sides to the point that the desperate needs of the poor and the military safety of the country are secondary and tertiary to the sourness of the mustard and the sogginess of the burger.
How many scientists, thrilled that their endowment crossed the finish line, have no idea that their request was never noticed, never discussed, never valued, but instead was part of the blanket approval of a package of paperwork that was too saturated by ketchup to be carefully evaluated?
Yet there are occasionally scientific grants that were scrutinized carefully, like the one to determine how to visually identify when the relish has lost its tang. This particular one was approved unanimously.
Will Rogers said, “Just be glad you're not getting all the government you are paying for.” What we do get after lousy meals are just desserts.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
READ NEXT: Biden, McCarthy Reach Tentative Debt Ceiling Agreement
It is really very simple. Through compromise both sides get everything they want. Both sides declare victory. The national debt gets higher and higher. Some day the house of cards will collapse and the finger pointing will begin.
That’s one way of looking at it and unfortunately it never changes because the House has not until now had strong enough leadership that flatly says, “NO”. I think under McCarthy we are going to be pleasantly surprised at many of the “wins” he accomplishes and prior speakers should be ashamed.
CUT spending, CUT waste & fraud
Scrap HHS NIH CDC NAID Dept Education, Energy, IRS FBI ATF DEA
CUT 50T