Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dum, and Tweedle-none

In Washington these days, there’s no oxygen left in the room to debate anything other than the faux debt ceiling issue. As the “deadline” draws near next week, every minute of talking head time on the cable networks is focused on the game of chicken being played between the competing plans offered by the Democratic and Republican leadership. Both plans are ineffective at dealing with our chronic spending and debt problems. Nonetheless, the debt ceiling appears to be occupying every minute of waking time in the days of the dinosaurs of political leadership currently responsible for resolving the issue.

But the key actors in this little farce remind me more of characters in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland than political leaders of vision and courage:

Strange all this Difference should be
‘Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!

The contemporary version of Alice in Wonderland we see playing out before us in the halls of power in Washington has added a third member to the Tweedle cast. Let me introduce the actors now performing their roles in our nation’s capital:

Tweedle-dee has set forward a “debt reduction plan” that will cut a grand total of $6 billion from our $1.7 trillion deficit next year. That’s less than one half of one percent of the annual deficit. There’s no debt reduction in this plan.

Tweedle-dum wants to increase taxes and refuses to cut spending in any meaningful way.

Tweedle-none has no plan other than to step up to a microphone and petulantly complain about Tweedle-dee’s plan.

You can read the rest of this article at Broadside Books' "Line of Fire" here.