How much is Congress costing the nation each year? Because, from the spectacles its membership has put on all year, it appears that we are paying dearly for … nothing.

Nothing! For it is a do-nothing Congress, horns locked and progress blocked on every issue, that is playing to the galleries instead of sticking to business. These people were elected to govern. To run the government. To fund the government. To raise the money to run the government. To protect the national interest, including its full faith and credit.

And yet all they can do is posture and fight, hurting the nation much more than they do the partisans on the other side.

The failure of the deficit-cutting super committee is just the latest example of this disgusting, institutionalized impasse. It appears that majority and minority leaders put the most intractable, doctrinaire representatives of their parties on the panel, rather than pragmatists that could actually accomplish something.

We suggest they s...