On Pennsylvania Avenue, right near the end,

there lived a President who wanted to spend.

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He knew spending meant power, so hour by hour,

he thought up more spends from his Washington tower.

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“I’ll spend without limits; I’ll spend without blame!

Raising taxes on the rich—that’s the name of the game.”

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Down the street, though, a House filled with thriftier folk -

had a budget to pass, or the country’d go broke.

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“We can’t spend all day; we’ve got bills to pay!

Let’s keep deficits and higher taxes away.”

.The Senate next door to the House just refused.

“We don’t like your budget. We’ve got some bad news:

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The President says we can spend all we want, and we’ll simply raise taxes whenever we choose.”

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So they spent and they spent and they borrowed some more.

And when all that was spent, they spent even more.

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But not everyone thought the spending was nice. In the House and the Senate, some spenders thought twice.

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“We’ll cut down on spending. We have a bad feeling…”

then—SMACK!—right on schedule, they hit the debt ceiling.

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Then the President’s office, confronted with debt:“If it’s cuts they want now, then it’s cuts they shall get.

We’ll threaten such cuts that NO one would take, and show them that cuts are not smart to make.”

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“This will make Congress move. We’ll just float out a tester… broad, haphazard cuts, that we’ll call The Sequester.”

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The Senate and even the House said, “Okay!

That will motivate us to find a good way.

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We’ll figure this out and stave off those cuts—to allow them to happen, we’d have to be nuts.”

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So the deadline was set, but the spending went on. A year and a half had soon come and gone.

The House passed a budget; the Senate said no; the President very much enjoyed the show.

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“Spend higher! Spend faster! Grow the welfare rolls!

Soon, love for the spending will show up in the polls.”

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He even raised taxes, but it wasn’t enough—the levels of spending grew too fast to keep up.

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“Don’t you mind the sequester,” he told Capitol Hill. “You said you would fix it, and I’m sure you will.”

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But they could not agree on ways to cut spending, and before they knew it, the sequester was pending.

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“Oh no!” they all cried. “We can’t let these cuts stand!”

And the President said, “WHO thought of this terrible plan?”

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They didn’t remember–it was his all along.

He’d distracted them with his spending-cut song.

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Now he returned, to “save them from harm,” and to keep them forgetting all but his charm.

So the President said with a glint in his eye,

“You tried to cut spending. I saw how you tried.

But it’s just too painful—I’m sure you can see.

From the beginning, you should have listened to me.”

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“I’ll save you all from the spend-cutters’ axes. You see, the solution is JUST IS JUST TO RAISE TAXES!”

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We don’t know yet how this story will end. Will Congress raise taxes and continue to spend?

We need a balanced budget with smarter cuts—reforming entitlements will take guts.

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Reprinted in part from AskHeritage.org