Perhaps you noticed a little chill in the air late last week. Well, a big chill. As in deep freeze in many regions. Temperatures plummeted across the country causing anything and everything outside to ice up solid. A few things inside didn’t escape the arctic blast either.  Frostbite on exposed skin was a common occurrence. Basement water pipes burst. Even electric car batteries rapidly lost their charges as owners lined up at charging stations, exposed to the frigid air. (Perhaps that possibility was buried in the fine, fine, fine print of the e-car manual.)

The weather was by far the number one topic of conversation for most Americans. From play-off football games to political caucuses and school shutdowns to work-from-home office edicts, the bitter cold was part of every special event and just regular daily routines from coast to coast. And, as the old saying goes, while everybody complained about the weather, nobody did anything about it. As if they could. (Although there are some climate activists who seem to be trying – alas, with limited success thus far).

On a related note, there was also news from Washington, D.C., where snow jobs are seldom just relegated to winter, that apparently the government will not shut down this month. To great fanfare, Democratic and Republican leaders from both the Senate and House of Representatives announced the passage of a stopgap bill to fund the Feds through early March. It seems there was an agreement reached on a discretionary spending level of somewhere between $1.5 and $1.6 trillion dollars. No one was quite sure of the actual number because when you’re talking about that much dinero, a hundred billion dollars could simply be a rounding error.

Some politicos on both sides of the aisle praised this “continuing resolution” (CR) that, I believe, pretty much just extends last fiscal year’s spending levels while battles in the spending trenches of myriad government agencies continue apace. Bear in mind that fiscal year in question ended on September 30th. So, this latest CR (the third such action since last fall, according to reports) basically means Congress has now kicked their responsibility to create a national budget down the road for what could end up being half the current fiscal year.

As with the weather adage, everybody complains about the budget, but nobody seems to do anything about it. It would be nice to say that there are some, like the climate activists, who are trying to create a fiscally responsible budget (although that might be an oxymoron on Capitol Hill), but their success is of the limited variety as well.

Whenever federal budget committees get together, I’m pretty sure the elephant in the room is always the national debt. As of this writing, the monetary hole We the People have dug for ourselves is close to $34.4 trillion dollars. Wait a minute. $34.5 trillion. No, no, $34.6. Shoot, it’s hard to keep up with it since every day we’re adding billions more to it. (I’m reminded of the late gravel-voiced Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois who, legend has it, when embroiled in a budget battle back in the 1960s, said, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” And now we’re talking trillions.)

Congresspersons and Senators are very fond of that real money – as long as it flows back to their home districts and states. It always seems to be okay with them to put money in the budget that directly benefits their own constituents. Unfortunately, there are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators thinking exactly the same way, and the budget blossoms when everyone says, “You vote for mine, I’ll vote for yours.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress actually had a contest to see who could spend the least amount of the taxpayers’ dollars? Former Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire annually used to give out his “Golden Fleece” awards to the elected officials he thought spent money for the most frivolous causes. While he’s not around now to continue that tradition, the fleecing is still being done all the time. How about establishing a new honor that salutes those who find ways to actually cut the budget? It could be called the “Down to Our Last Dollar” prize. Winners may not be very popular in Washington, but I think the rest of us might well hail them as heroes. Heck, we may even vote them back into whatever office they hold by acclimation (thereby saving even more money by avoiding campaign spending).

It’s just a thought running through my mind as I start getting ready to figure out my taxes.

©MMXXIV. William J. Lewis, III – Freelance Writer