Much like the Roman emperor who supposedly played his violin while his city burned, Congress has found just as a creative way to avoid responsibility, accountability or anything else closely resembling adult behavior.

While Nero found a scapegoat in the form of Christians, Congress has found an enemy just as dangerous. the foe is AIG and the crime is paying contractual, if undeserved, bonuses. The trouble is that the bonuses were paid with taxpayer mmoney.

Congress maintains that it's not the purview of a giant insurance company to steal money from taxpayers. That's specifically Congress' job. And like any Mafioso family whose territory has been breached, Congress retaliated.

The sad part is, we may all be the losers.

Since Congress wrote a provision into the buyout that bonuses would be paid, I don't see their justification for their outrage. First Senator Chris Dodd, head of the Senate Banking Committee, claimed that he didn't include the language, then admitted he did. He said the Treasury pressured him into including it. That's understandable since Dodd is a first term Senator with no real experience about how Washington works. He couldn't possibly fight the admin....

Wait! What? Dodd has been a senator since 1981 and was a congressman for three terms prior to that?

Never mind.

Last week the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the growth of the deficit over the next 10 years to reach 9.3 Trillion. That;'s a capital T! The administration predicted quite a bit less.

If we spent the 170 million the AIG executives got every year, it would take over 200 years to get to a trillion. Take that times the projected deficit and we are looking at 1800 years of spending.

Neither Congress nor the President have the time nor the luxury of being outraged. It's time to pu down the fiddle and look at the bigger problems.