Where are the Grown-Ups?

Once again, current American politics is facing a serious problem: financiers in global firms that have way too little market or risk discipline. And once again the politicians answer by delivering us a piece of crap, the 2010 financial "reform" legislation. It didn't need to be; there were some interesting ideas floating around. (My own personal favorites are to breathe life back into the Clayton Act, and to pass a 21st century version of Glass-Steagall.) But the lawmakers in this sorry excuse for a legislative branch just want to make their political points and move on.

I think the Republicans deserve particular opprobrium from those of us who believe that the best solutions are free markets with goods and services that are properly priced. They did it before with Obamacare; they are doing it now with financial services legislation. These so-called conservatives think it is better for the country to let the Democrats pass massive legislation that is 80 percent crap than to fight and work to produce legislation that is 30 percent crap. Their calculus must be - let Obama and the Democratic hoist themselves with this stuff and we will pick up seats in Congress, and (oh joy of joys!) maybe beat the guy in his next election.

In the meantime, we get junk legislation that will never be repealed and the real problems in the country go unresolved.

What a waste. There are intelligent ways to address things like, say, over $30 trillion in unfunded Medicare liability. (That amount, by the way, is just about inconceivable.) Representative Ryan from Wisconsin, who is one of maybe ten grown-ups in the Congress, has such a plan, and it will probably lose him his job.

In the private world, a serious-sounding intelligent person with good arguments can usually hold the floor, change minds, and even inspire some measure of long-term perspective. Beats me why can't this be in the public world, but obviously it can't.