While he was a U.S. Senator, John F. Kennedy wrote a book titled “Profiles in Courage.” In it, he chronicled acts of personal courage by sometimes unsung heroes who did the right thing regardless of personal cost. In every case, the people profiled in JFK’s book were faced with difficult decisions framed in the context of conflict. Sometimes the conflicts were the result of the perpetual struggle between right and wrong. Sometimes their struggles were the result of having to define what is right and what is wrong. 

Times have certainly changed since the publication of President Kennedy’s book. The struggles in Congress are no longer to define what is right, or even to do what is right. In Congress, the struggle has become how each member can best feather his or her political nest at our expense.

If you want to recover from an economic meltdown, you don’t send hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks that caused it. You don’t spend it paving highways and buying used cars. You don’t shield the Fed from accountability. And you don’t call it “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” It wasn’t an act. It was an outrage.

Congress and the Administration ignored the American people, wasted $1 trillion on a failed “Stimulus Package”, and quadrupled the federal deficit in 1 year. Then they blamed the last Administration for the bailout debacle while using the remaining monies as a political slush fund.