Hard to be a Good Citizen

So, it's the middle of the night (Friday) and I can't sleep. C-Span is droning on in the background. I make coffee and start to listen to the debate.

It's the financial regulation legislation, the "Conference" committee wherein the Senate and the House try to blend their bills and modify them both to satisfy each other.

First to speak is a Republican, who puts the fear of God into me - this bill, all 2,000 pages of it, will kill jobs, kill industry, stop companies from "hedging" their bets on the future cost of materials, like steel for the tractors they make. In this horrid recesion, this bill will send us all back to the stone age to grind sticks together in order to make fire. We will be hungry, in ragged clothes.

Since they're so courteous that they always "rotate" speakers, next up is a Democrat. According to this gentleman, we will all be in clover and honey as soon as the bill is passed. Companies will quit their greedy ways - poor people will keep their homes. Never - NEVER - again will we see the kind of financial collapse just experienced. Wall Street will finally make everything up to the suffering people on Main Street and we will all ride off into the sunset of financial security together.

So, I'm like - confused? Is this an awful, awful bill, presented by Socialist-loving Democrats who only want to create a dependant society, or is it a good bill, objected to by the "Just Say No" Republicans whose only agenda is making Obama fail?

Well, here's the deal. I listened to these people - all 43 of them who are on the Conference Committee - and not one of them ever budged from their "party line." Democrats said the bill was the answer to all our problems. Republicans said if the bill was passed, we would witness the demise of capitalism, free markets and American pie.

I'm saying - it's tough to be a good citizen. But I'm not gonna quit trying!