Drac­u­la, Spend­ing Cuts, and Speak­er Mike John­son

Among the top pri­or­i­ties for new­ly select­ed House Speak­er Mike John­son (R‑L A ) was his announced inten­tion to form a bipar­ti­san pan­el to cut mas­sive spend­ing that has led to an unsus­tain­able $33 tril­lion nation­al debt. The prag­ma­tist in me cheers, but the cyn­ic in me says ask­ing Con­gress to cut spend­ing is like ask­ing Drac­u­la to cut back on his con­sump­tion of blood. Spend­ing helps keep mem­bers in office. Rather than solv­ing prob­lems and cut­ting the debt, stay­ing in office seems to be all that mat­ters to many of them.
In addi­tion to the worth­less slo­gan that mem­bers are only “bring­ing home the bacon” (more like pork in many cas­es) and get­ting a “fair share” for their dis­tricts and states, spend­ing con­tributes to their careers, which the Founders fore­saw as lim­it­ed ser­vice in Wash­ing­ton before they returned to real jobs.
I have longed to see C …