Debt Crisis: Spare the Cots and Spoil the Congress Children?

Great pick up by Digby in noting how Boehner adjourned the Congress for the night, even as America’s financial well-being supposedly hung in the balance. She writes: “There was a time when they did whatever it took to get a bill passed, even if it meant keeping the vote open all night long.”

In fact, the photo above is from a 2007 BagNews post, The Cots of War. Back then, Harry Reid kept the Senate in session to debate a little problem called the Iraq War. The photo, as you might imagine, struck me as a fateful one.

Not only isn’t 2007 all that long ago, however, it’s also interesting to consider that, in this critical moment-in-time, especially as Tea Party hairshirts are bedding down in their Congressional offices, it’s amazing the GOP, all up in arms, doesn’t see the point for its own slumber party.

By the way, I’d say the beds still make for who-knows-how-many poignant metaphors. Of course, the coffin image still fits as we contemplate the implications of the choking off of the government. But then, who needs to conjure beyond the image of beds — VA beds, nursing home beds, student dorm beds, and on and on.

(photo: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. Washington. July 17/18, 2007.)