With apologies to Wordsworth, a well-known conservative emailed the following sonnet to The Scrapbook “Expressing Concern with Republicans’ Tendency to Revert to a Green-Eyeshade Obsession with Trivial Spending Cuts.” Here’s hoping this will stiffen congressional spines for going after larger game, like entitlement reform.
The budget’s too much with you; late and soon,
Obsessed with spending, you lay waste your powers:
Little we see in ideas that are ours;
You risk squandering your broad mandate, a sordid boon!
Defense cuts that bare our bosom to the moon;
The bold reforms that should be pushed at all hours,
But are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
In this, it worries me, you may be out of tune;
This moves you not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A supply-sider suckled in a creed outworn;
Then might I, sipping my fresh-brewed tea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Jack Kemp rising from the sea;
Or hear old Reagan blow his wreathed horn.
Obsessed with spending, you lay waste your powers:
Little we see in ideas that are ours;
You risk squandering your broad mandate, a sordid boon!
Defense cuts that bare our bosom to the moon;
The bold reforms that should be pushed at all hours,
But are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
In this, it worries me, you may be out of tune;
This moves you not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A supply-sider suckled in a creed outworn;
Then might I, sipping my fresh-brewed tea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Jack Kemp rising from the sea;
Or hear old Reagan blow his wreathed horn.
