When you are in over your head, raise the ceiling. That's the fiscal philosophy these days in Washington, where Congress just voted to raise the limit for the allowable national debt to $10.615 trillion...

Far too much tax money is going to interest payments instead of domestic needs. Far too much of the debt is being held by foreign investors.

The next president and Congress ought to hire a credit counselor to put them on an allowance and a payment plan.

I can't believe I'm going to type this but... PREACH!  Brilliant!

And the quickest way to bring a little bit of that common sense back to the game is to get a handle on all of the bridges going nowhere.  Congress needs to have bacon for breakfast every morning into perpetuity.  Cut that pork.   (Zing!)

The trick, of course, is to ensure that the next Congress is as devoid of the same old villains as possible.  Case in point, El Senor Carl Levin.  

Levin recently voted against fourteen of fifteen anti-pork measures and supported things like building new bike paths and a peace garden... in North Dakota.  Really swell ideas but nothing I could see Thomas Jefferson supporting.  Heck, Thomas Jefferson would probably spend a day in Congress walking from desk to desk punching each and every member in the face.  Then Alexander Hamilton would saunter through the doors and challenge the ne'er-do-wells to pistols at sunset.

But alas, those kinds of statesmen seem relegated to history.  We're left to deal with the current Congressional squalor with what we've got.  I'm not a member of Congress and if I were I probably wouldn't make a habit of physically assaulting my colleagues (as much as any one of us might be given cause on a daily basis) so I, like you, fair reader, am left to do my part from a distance.  And that "part" includes shining a spotlight on the problems and identifying what are, at times, the most basic of solutions.

Things like cutting pork and eliminating a couple of those taxpayer funded month long vacations in the middle of various economic crisis.  

Yesterday the House voted 213-212 to go on break for the next month, with pay, while legislation dealing with staggering gas prices sat in the cue.  The 213 votes to fully fund a month's paid vacation... every single one of them Democrats.  Six Dems also abstained instead of voting NO.

Michigan's members of Congress?  Congressmen Joe Knollenberg, Congressman Tim Walberg and Congressmen Rogers, McCotter, Miller and Ehlers all voted against the paid vacation.  The Democrats, including Bart Stupak, voted YES or abstained.

No wonder they refuse to support concepts like the gas tax holiday.  A) They don't want to solve the problem of high gas prices to begin with and B) they're counting on those tax dollars to pay for their vacations.

Well Carl, Bart, Carolyn and team... if your little siesta takes you anywhere near the FREEP building in Detroit this month will you grab a bottle of weed killer and check in on the editorial team?  Hate for you guys to lose an ally in the pursuit of big, irresponsible government.

Everyone else? Those of us who actually care enough to stand up for what's right even when the rest of the state seems inclined to settle for the status quo? I think we know what we have to do...