Congressional credit downgraded

Poor, poor Congressmorons. It seems your actions do have consequences: Standard & Poor’s has downgraded our national credit rating—citing political instability as the main reason. Yes, the economy’s tanking, but S&P has got it spot on: turns out it’s not the economy, stupid, it’s the politicians who are more concerned with balancing their own re-election fund checkbooks than the nation’s.

Enjoy your vacation, the “August break” that you couldn’t wait to get off to, regardless of the state of the economy. Housemorons didn’t even stick around for the Senate vote on raising the debt ceiling, barreling their way to the airports to get their auto-upgrade-to-first-class seats home to their districts or summer homes. And having not a care for the tens of thousands of FAA employees who’d been “furloughed” while ’Pubs shut down operations in an attempt to score points against Dems.

The FAA shutdown—the whole national dysfunction distilled to a single episode—swirled around a Florida Congressmoron tacking on a couple of provisions to the otherwise-ordinary FAA funding extension bill: to cut off subsidies to small airports (only in districts represented by Dems) and to throttle the ability of airline employees to organize and participate in unions. John Mica, that particular moron, quite the posturing puff-pigeon when he thought he’d be a Tea Party hero, spent Friday whining to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. Seems, unlike Sally Fields, we don’t like him; we really don’t like him. And he just doesn’t get it.

No kidding.

But Mica’s not the only one we despise; the NY Times reports that 82% of Americans “disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job”. Two thoughts on that: 1) 82% seems low; 2) For “disapprove” I’d have substituted something along the lines of “consider them the lowest form of life on earth.”

So, the Congressional credit rating has been downgraded. Me, I’d put it at about a C: In default with little prospect for recovery.

Imagine that—you screw with the lives of thousands of FAA employees and millions of Americans…and there are negative consequences? Who’da thunk it?

So, pity the poor Congressmorons, who may discover that because of them causing the downgrading of US credit rating and subsequent tightening of money, their corporate contributors may find it harder to write out the really fat checks to their re-election campaigns or sweep them, their families and staff off in corporate jets on “fact-finding” junkets to Costa Rica or Lausanne.

Sadly, though, no matter what hard times these hacks face, the American people will have it worse.