Poems of the Week

Tightwads Abiding

by Dan Campion

“The first debt ceiling fight was in 1953. It looked almost exactly like the one today”
NPR

Dear Ike: I hear your measured voice
(Just like I did, age four)
Tell Congress it must make a choice.
Good government needs more.

The paymasters, apparently,
Were scraping empty tills
Until you made the Senate see
The U.S. paid its bills.

I doubt that, now, you would believe
The sums, the smirks, the braying,
But you would recognize, and grieve,
The sluggishness in paying.