Congress Has the Menu, It Just Won’t Order

Every few months Congress puts on the same play. The curtain goes up on a debt limit "crisis," everyone clutches their pearls, some last-minute deal gets cut at 2 a.m., and the cameras go home satisfied that democracy worked. Meanwhile the actual thing driving the debt, the stuff nobody wants to touch, just sits there on the menu untouched. Everyone in that building knows what's on it. They just won't order.

That's the part that should bother people more than it does. The debt ceiling fights are a proxy war. They let members go on cable news and sound tough about spending without ever having to vote on the programs that actually move the needle. Entitlements, defense, the interest payments that are now eating the budget alive, none of that gets a floor vote with any teeth. It's easier to argue about a borrowing cap that everyone eventually raises anyway than to sit down and say which checks get smaller.

We're not naive about why. Touching the real drivers means telling voters something they don't want to hear, and telling your own donors and interest groups the same thing. There's no applause line in "we have to slow the growth of this program." So Congress keeps choosing the fake fight over the real one, year after year, and calling it fiscal responsibility.

At some point the bond market stops waiting for Washington to find its courage. The menu doesn't change just because nobody orders off it. Somebody eventually pays the bill, and it won't be the people who kept dodging the vote.