Playing the national debt challenge

Dear Editor,

Back in the 1950s, rival teenage hoodlum gangs would play out a challenge with their fast hotrod cars. Two boys would race toward each other, or toward a cliff. The first to swerve or bail out would be the loser — the chicken. Playing the national debt game has become like that. So has the federal budget with the government shutdown game.

Adult men and women in Congress and the executive branch, charged with governing a nation, have divided themselves into rival gangs, fighting each other over political turf, power, control, influence. They hold the debt limit or budget hostage for ransom or blackmail until one side or the other backs down and turns chicken. Meanwhile, the nation and people suffer the consequence, like the neighborhoods did when the hoodlum gangs

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