Housework: or How I learned to stop worrying and love the debt

Everyone enjoys employing the kitchen table analogy to the inner-workings of our national economy, but when it comes to the absurd conversation muddying the D.C. waters right now--a balanced budget amendment--that analogy falls flat on its face.

This isn't the weekly family budget meeting over coffee: "Honey, how much do we need to spend on groceries? What's the co-pay for the kids' dental cleanings? Have you paid the car insurance yet?" No, this is the conversation you have when things are somewhat normal and you have the money to parcel out. Where the country is now is more like this: "Honey, we're flat broke, but the corner of the roof over the kitchen door is sagging and it just started leaking yesterday. If we borrow the money to fix it now, it'll cost about $800. If we wait and keep our budget "balanced", the roof will cave in and we'll have to replace that entire side of the kitchen which will cost more like $8,000. So what do you want to do?"

Balancing the U.S. budget is a fanciful idea that it would've been nice to have courted before we decided to invade and occupy parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Funny we heard nothing about it then. It would've been nice to discover this "dire need" when Bush handed tax refunds hand over fist to everyone whether they needed it or not. No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, I could go on and on.

Think also of this: When you're on a curvy road it may be prudent to slow down as you approach a twist--consider the situation from all angles--but when you're in that sharpest part of the curve at its mid-point, you have to speed up to keep yourself under control. We're at 9.2% unemployment. If we do not raise the debt ceiling, that number will explode as hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs and those people will not be putting money into the pot any longer--they won't stop in your store, visit your gas station, or make appointments at your clinic--and then you will send off your employees to join their ranks, wondering all the while how long it will be before you yourself stop contributing to our economy but rather find yourself asking the government for money: Money we said it didn't have so it therefore it shouldn't spend.

This is not the time to default and it certainly isn't the time to even consider balancing the budget. Yes, we absolutely need to reign in spending and soon, but not this weekend! If you don't think the stimulus helped enough, congratulations, you are correct. And why did it not? Because it wasn't big enough. We have to do more. We must invest not divest. We have to grow the jobs through infrastructure investment--think the WPA, the CCC, and the TVA: We need the jobs and the improvements. We need to find energy solutions if for no other reason (and yes there are many others) than to save ourselves from taking over even more of the Middle East with unfunded wars.

And this is also not the time to keep BS promises: Repubs, tell Grover Norquist sorry, but this is crazy, we need revenue. Dems, tell your constituents, look, we have to reform entitlements, just look at the demographics. I'll even get the ball rolling. I never expected to see the money I paid into Social Security and if that's the price of my contribution to softening the harshness of the debt crisis, then fine. I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with is my Federally-employed and retired family members losing everything they've spent decades working for (their jobs and pensions) because some ideologues made a damned promise when they were running for office. Take my Social Security money, please don't take my house. Here's the $800, the $8000 will ruin me.

Let's fix the damned kitchen roof now before everything falls to hell. Raise the debt ceiling, don't shut down the government this September, and invest in job growth. Then, once the crises are averted, we can work on the deferred maintenance. Then, we will be in the position to solve the long-term problems.

And maybe as we sift through the piles of bills and stack of money over coffee at our national kitchen table, just maybe we will be able to join Irene Dunn from "I Remember Mama" in saying: "Is good. We don't have to go (back) to the bank."