Voters and federal workers are by now getting tired of all these cat-and-mouse games the two political parties in Congress are playing with their livelihoods and with the nation's economy. That includes the government shutdown because of the failure of Republicans and Democrats in the two chambers to find a compromise. Each has an objective and neither minds inflicting suffering on others to try to get its way.
This is getting tiresome — really tiresome. The nation's government is dysfunctional and it shows. It's so dysfunctional, in fact, that it can't even do something as basic as budget the country's revenues and balance the national checkbook.
All voters hear is what "the other party" is not doing - that and a garbled mess of meaningless rhetoric and political one-upmanship.
The men and women sent to Washington have virtually abandoned their constituents. They are elected to office to oversee government, not kick it in the ditch.
It's time for voters to send this message to most members of Congress: Do your job! That sounds simple enough most everywhere in the nation save for Washington, where it apparently is too tall an order for lawmakers.
Voters can send baboons and gorillas to Capitol Hill and get the same results — nothing accomplished, nothing achieved — and without all the nasty finger-pointing. Congress can't create a budget, and neither can baboons. Democrats and Republicans can't get along, and neither can baboons and gorillas.
What members of Congress are telling us these days is to expect absolutely nothing from them unless we elect a super-majority of all Democrats or all Republicans to the White House, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. What they are telling us is that they can not work or get along together.
That is no way to run a country that is supposed to be the leader of the free world.