Reports from the Potomac: What Is This, Children's Homework?

I hailed a cab just after 2 a.m., feeling exhausted. When the cab driver realized that I’m a newspaper reporter, he asked me, “Oh yeah, what happened with the shutdown?” When I sighed, “They avoided it at the last minute,” he shrugged and said, “I don’t really get politics. But what the heck were they doing until now?”

I sympathize with him. The hopelessly deadlocked negotiations for the fiscal 2011 budget lasted until the wee hours of the night on April 8. Both parties reached a tentative agreement less than an hour before the deadline, thereby avoiding the first government shutdown in almost 15 years.

I wish I could say that it was a happy ending in which Congress showed good sense, but the budget negotiations had been off the rails for half a year. It is intolerable for federal employees and the American people to be manipulated like this.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, who belongs to the minority* Republican Party, said, “This has been a lot of discussion and a long fight.” To be sure, the opposition runs deep between Republicans, who are forcing spending cuts, and Democrats, who are fixated on social welfare policies such as subsidies for abortions.

Even so, there should have been plenty of time for negotiation. They were just like elementary school students who panic because they put off their homework until the end of summer vacation. Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that both parties made the agreement as a political show for their supporters.

In a televised address, President Barack Obama said with a smile, “Americans of different beliefs came together.” But seeing Obama look back on this noisy farce with a smile leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

*Editor’s note: The GOP is in fact the majority party in the House of Representatives.