I wonder how anyone could stomach to vote in such a way as to lead to another Tom Daschle victory statement to the press. That reedy passionless recitation of "great victory" leaves me thinking that sitting listening to prepared statements all day in committees must do some damage to the higher brain functions.

The great victory is that Congress will be able to keep the gravy train running. We wouldn't want too much money bein dumped into the economy all at once. That might lead to irrational exuberance. I'm no economist, but it seems quite apparent to me that meeting the demands of medicare and medicaid and social security won't be accomplished by keeping revenues and taxes at their present levels. The only thing that will do that is gearing up the economy. We need more wealth to do that, but government does not create wealth. It siphons it off. It's an economic tapeworm. Private capital creates wealth. We can excoriate the excesses of corporate CEOs, but no how much they get paid, they mostly create more real wealth than the most powerful senator. I'd like to see shareholders take back the control of their corporation from the management, who usually choose the Boards of Directors, but mostly I'd like to see more investment, and more profits on which to pay dividends, and raise everybody's tax bracket.

The 1990's was a powerful illustration of this, but it was built on a bubble, not real profits, but on the huge incomes generated by stock options combined with mad speculation. What we need is real growth based on real production of wealth, and that comes from real investment.