MauryTHINKS

“A man has to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.”

— W.C. Fields

Our Washington government is starting to remind me of my drunk uncle. Perhaps we all have one; he is the guy who shows up late at family reunions, in a remorseful “going to make it up to us all” way, given that no one knows where he has been and what he has been doing for the year. Upon a late and drunk arrival, he wants to impress so he starts to talk big to all the kids there about how he is going to give them money. Money that he does not have.

Of course, all the adults at the reunion know all about this uncle’s past false promises and that he has more liens on him than Mike Tyson. He knows they know, too, so he has to ply his malarkey with the most vulnerable and those with unformed opinions of him, the simple-minded children. He is much like our government, which panders to the most gullible among us with its stimulus rebate checks, which it then goes and borrows, adding to the $9 trillion debt racked up for us so far.

My personal uncle smells like cheap gin that comes in plastic bottles, and he has the demeanor of a lookout for a cock fight. Yet, he does, on occasion, impart wisdom to the under-aged kids there. One year he told them “In Budweiser there is wisdom, in bourbon there is freedom, and in water, there are bacteria.” It cost all the parents money the next year as all the children demanded only bottled water thereafter.

Yet the kids listen to him (like we listen to politicians) because he differs from their parents in that he tells them only what they want to hear. Further holding their attention is his track record: there is a 50/50 chance that he passes out — always a memorable experience for the kids.

Some of my relatives say his drinking and womanizing are a disease. I think of it more as a lifestyle choice. Either way, it should serve as a warning to kids who contemplate drinking because they initially think life is great; I think my uncle drinks because he knows that it isn’t.

We all have this sad uncle metaphor for our Congress: well past his usefulness, spending money that he does not have and clearly on the downward half of a very mediocre life. His sex life limited by age and the advent of commercially viable pepper spray, there is nothing but delusional nostalgia that keeps him going, and the thought that someone might believe his good intentions.

Like my uncle the lush, the U.S. government also made dramatic pronouncements of its pandering intentions in the form of an IRS letter sent to all of us telling of the impending rebate check. Our government spent $42 million of our money (well, not technically our money, it just borrowed more in our name) to send out a self-congratulatory mailer that tells us of its impending “largesse.”

This is the same pandering that Hillary Clinton did with her “Gas Tax Holiday.” Now, do not get me wrong, I am for any holiday that does not involve family or a long church service, but her thinly-veiled attempt to garner votes from the most short-sighted among us was shameful.

Sadly, the GOP, having been at the open bar of Washington for eight years now and drunk with their own delusions of power, are no better than the Democrats when it comes to stupid spending. Bush has been president’in since 2000 and has done nothing to curtail spending. The bureaucracy in D.C. seems to swell in attempts to meet the ever-expanding needs of the bureaucracy it supports.

I wish we could cut Washington’s bar tab off and make politicians sober up. But as long as they have an open tab on us, this insanity will continue.