"They worship the god of re-election."

US Nears Fiscal Disaster: 'Washington Doing Nothing'
Excerpt:

The U.S. is heading towards fiscal disaster and no one in Washington is doing anything about it, the authors of the Simpson-Bowles reform plan and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told CNBC Thursday.

"People are never going to understand how critical this particular time in history is," said Erskine Bowles, the North Carolina businessman and co-chairman of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. "We have $7.7 trillion worth of economic events that are going to hit America in the gut in December, and in Washington they're doing nothing about it."

... "They're both in this," Simpson said of the warring Democratic and Republican parties. "They worship the god of re-election."

Comment: Fiddling while Rome burns