The budgetary debate debacle in Congress may be gone, but the bad taste in the mouths of Americans isn’t. Who knows what consequences for future generations our Congress’ fiscal infighting will bring?

  Some of the arguments were about whether to cut tax deductions for corporate jets or cut college scholarships for the needy. Also considered were cutting $2.5 billion in subsidies to oil & gas companies OR $2.5 billion in home heating oil assistance for low-income families. Huh?!

  Back in Bible times, the prophet Ezekiel railed against such leaders: “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says to them: ‘See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away. I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another’” (Ezekiel 34:20-22).

  Many on Capitol Hill cater and care for the “fat sheep,” the wealthy, powerful special interests who will give to their unceasing re-election campaigns, but who will care for ALL the people? “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves…but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost…but [these shepherds] cared for themselves…I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves” (Ezekiel 34:2-10).

  How many of our leaders has the Lord “removed” due to sexual, financial or criminal charges? Congress has again put themselves in a per capita class of their own, setting scandal records that should make us wretch.

  The best description of “leadership” I’ve ever heard is: “If you think you’re a leader and no one is following, then you’re merely out for a walk.” Congress should look over its shoulder.

  Their isolation from regular people and real life comes from piling up multiple terms in Washington. “Professional  politicians” were never our Founding Fathers intent. They designed our government to be a “citizen legislature” made up of folks who understood what it was to work in business, agriculture, and industry. The original expectation was self-imposed term limits.

  Our D.C. leaders have further insulated themselves by creating systems which they refuse to put themselves under or fix, like the newly mandated healthcare and Social Security.

  But do we get the leaders we deserve? How many of us vote for those who will promise us the most pork? Many a statesman has warned that democracies deteriorate when the people realize by voting for big promisers they can vote themselves money. They will then bankrupt the federal treasury. Not a pretty picture.

 Like the prophet Ezekiel New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has pointed out so many of us in this ugly portrait: “’The generation that came of age in the last 50 years,’ he writes, ‘will be remembered most for the incredible bounty and freedom it received from its parents and the incredible debt burden and constraints it left on its kids.’ The greatest generation scrimped and saved; their kids, the boomers, went on a big shopping binge.” *

  Instead of more bailouts, binges and bickering; it’s time for some tighter belts.

(*”A Fool's Tower: Debt, Default and Worldview,” July 28, 2011, Chuck Colson, breakpoint.org)