Greg Awtry

Congress, what a joke.

Their approval ratings are like lead balloons, evident by last month’s Rasmussen Poll where only 9 percent of mainstream voters gave Congress a positive rating. It’s no wonder 58 percent of us would rather have a partial shutdown of government until the Democrats and Republicans can agree on spending cuts.

I am a bit surprised they haven’t hired some high profile, overpriced public relations firm to help boost their ratings. They could create an entire agency under a “PR Czar,” write another 2,000 page bill that nobody will read, name it “The 2011 Congressional Act to Pull the Wool Over Their Eyes,” pass it late on a Friday night and watch their new TV commercials on the Sunday Morning talk shows.

One wing of this new agency would be in charge of the president’s public relations. Of course they would have to come up with a marketing plan, and centralize it around a theme song. They could always take the easy route and use “Hail to the Chief,” but most likely they would chose Bruce Springsteen’s hit, “Born in the U.S.A.” How could you pass up lyrics like:

“Born down in a dead man’s town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much

‘Til you spend half your life just covering up.”

The U.S. Senate would also turn to Springsteen for their theme song, appropriately entitled, “Born to Run:”

“Baby this town rips the bones from your back

Its a death trap, it’s a suicide rap

We gotta get out while we’re young

`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”

The House of Representatives would be more difficult. There are so many to choose. How about Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns:”

“Isn’t it rich?

Are we a pair?

Me here at last on the ground,

You in mid-air.

Send in the clowns.”

Or Simon and Garfunkel’s “Slip Sliding Away:”

“Slip sliding away, slip sliding away

You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away

We’re workin’ our jobs, collect our pay

Believe we’re gliding down the highway, when in fact we’re slip sliding away.”

Or, how about, The Monkees:

“Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees

People say we monkey around

Any time, or anywhere,

Just look over your shoulder

Guess who’ll be standing there.”

And what about those Wisconsin State Senators who left their state and are hiding out in Illinois to avoid voting? Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” comes to mind:

“You Just slip out the back, Jack

Make a new plan, Stan

You don’t need to be coy, Roy

Just get yourself free.”

Heck, even We The People could get involved. We could have our own theme songs. Remember Patsy Cline’s “Crazy?”

“I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying

And I’m crazy for loving you.”

Or maybe we should use Elvis Presley’s, “Teddy Bear:”

“Put a Chain around my neck and lead me anywhere…”

Back to the U.S. Congress. What would you choose for their theme song? I think mine would be based on that old childhood tune, “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” You remember that. It seemed to take hours to sing.

“99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall.”

They could change it to fit the fiscal mess they have gotten us in to. How about:

“Fourteen trillion dollars in debt, Fourteen trillion dollars.

You take one down and pass it around,

Thirteen trillion, nine hundred and ninety nine billion,

Nine hundred and ninety nine million,

Nine hundred and ninety nine thousand

Nine hundred and ninety nine dollars in debt.”

All 435 members could stand and sing it in unison every time they cut a billion dollars. How long would it take to pay off the national debt if they cut one billion dollars every minute, then stood to sing their new theme song? Now think about it. If they cut one billion dollars a minute, that would be a whopping $1,440 billion a day! Did you guess 27 years? If you did, you would be right.

Instead of cutting $1,440 billion a day, they are talking about $60 billion in a year.

“Send in the Clowns!”

Politics is messy at best. From the moment a candidate tosses his or her hat into the ring, there is only one constant. There will be winners and losers.

First there is the primary election where winners advance and losers go home. Then there is the general election where winners take office and losers exit the scene. But that is only the beginning. The final ‘winners’ must now govern, and what does that involve? Winning and losing of course.

From the tiniest city council chambers to the floors of state capitols, to the halls of Congress, an elected politician must know how to win and equally important, know how to lose. And this doesn’t apply only to elections. It applies to the hundreds and hundreds of votes cast while in session.

I would hope that every elected official knows ‘you can’t win ‘em all.’ Surely they realize they are going to win some and lose some, but above all, they know they must stay in the fight to properly represent their constituents.

Unless you serve in Wisconsin, it seems.

Fourteen Democratic state senators in Wisconsin have gone AWOL, fleeing to nearby Illinois and hiding out like common criminals. They are doing so, because as long as they are gone, the Wisconsin Senate does not have a quorum, thus is unable to vote on any legislation.

Now there is a lesson we should be teaching our children. When the going gets tough, run and hide. Whatever happened to standing up for what you believe? Whatever happened to fighting for your principles?

Instead of staying engaged in good old political debate, these ding-dongs would rather play hide-and-seek.

Instead of trying to convince your opponents they may be wrong, these cowards crawl down a hole.

Instead of trying to compromise with the other side, these overgrown brats take their ball and go home.

I haven’t been to Wisconsin for a couple of years. Who knows, that may be the way they do things there now. It’s hard for me to imagine a couple of these sheepish senators attending the Nebraska vs. Wisconsin football game next October 1. I suppose if the mighty Huskers are up at halftime, the Wisconsin team will go crawl down a badger hole and not show up for the second half. What would the senators say about that?

I expect some of these AWOL senators have children. I wonder what their advice would be if their child was struggling in a math class. Would the senator tell their kid to just stop going to class?

Thank goodness our forefathers didn’t have spines of jelly. Otherwise we would still be sending tea taxes to Great Britain. Slavery would be the law of the land in the Confederate States of America. We would have lost World War II. America is a lot of things, but one thing it’s not is a tuck-your-tail-and-run coward.

What are these politicians thinking? If I were a voter in Wisconsin, I would say, “If this is how you are going to fight for me, by running and hiding, then my advice would be for you to keep going … the farther away from Wisconsin the better.”

Maybe these 14 Democrats feel they are doing the right thing, basically shutting down the Wisconsin State Senate. Call me old fashioned, but I think showing up to work, doing the job you were hired to do is “doing the right thing.”

Hey, on second thought, maybe they are onto something. If every Wisconsin government employee moved to Illinois, it wouldn’t take long for Wisconsin’s Governor Walker to balance his budget after all. (I wonder if we should tell any would-be-fleeing-Wisconsinites that Illinois just raised its state income tax by 66 percent? Nah, that’ll be our little secret.)