By Dan Woods

Although it’s easy to view Congress as nothing more than a gang of self-serving, dishonest, “say-anything-to-get-elected” semi-hoodlums, the truth of the matter is that most of our elected officials really want to do the right thing and make America a better place.

Oh, sure, every once in a while we read a newspaper story about the occasional Congressman who is caught with $100,000 in cash in his freezer. But how many of us can honestly say that we’ve never taken a pencil home from work that didn’t belong to us? When your “work” owns the Federal Mint, you end up using $100 bills as Post-It Notes. And sometimes an extra stack or two of C-notes is just going to wind up in your briefcase. It’s inevitable.

The real issue with Congress is that all the important stuff has already been done.

Congress’s job is to make laws and establish budgets. But the early Congresses already did the really essential work. Heck, the Bill of Rights was written during the very first Congress. After the Freedoms of the Press, Religion, and Pursuit of Happiness, it’s all downhill. That’s why recent Congresses have been reduced to debating the merits of a national law requiring digital cameras to go “click” and whether our national flower should be the Mountain Laurel instead of, say, the dandelion.

As far as budgets go, earlier Congresses got to debate spending for things like roads, national defense, and the Louisiana Purchase. These are serious things that everyone agrees that the country needs-especially during Mardi Gras.

Lately Congress has really had to stretch themselves to find things on which to spend money. That explains how they spent several million dollars in 2007 on “The Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure”-which a member of Congress admitted may or may not actually exist. And when they run out of imaginary institutes to fund, Congress has even been known to vote themselves a pay raise out of sheer desperation.

That’s why Congress loves new aircraft carriers and fighter planes. As soon as a new one is developed, Congress rushes out and orders a couple of gross-plus a complete set of spare parts, owner’s manuals, and the optional undercarriage rust-proofing. Then they slap themselves on their backs and high-five each other in the corridors of the Capital Building. Now there’s some spending you can sink your teeth into!

Although it may seem tremendously appealing to dissolve Congress and send everyone back home to get real jobs, that’s not the answer. We might actually need Congress in the future to make a law about something we haven’t anticipated yet-like whether it should be illegal to beam “Carrot Top: The Comeback Tour” into your home on holographic TV during primetime.

In this regard, Congress is a little bit like your volunteer fire department. You hope you never need them, but it’s nice to know they’re there if you do. Both organizations are full of eager, capable men and women who are just itching to go out and help the community. And, of course, play with their nifty equipment. For firemen, that means things like two-way radios, the jaws-of-life, and high-pressure hoses. The problem is that in Congress’s case, their “equipment” includes things like the Federal Reserve interest rate and the Tax Code.

Everyone likes their local fire department and Congress could take a valuable lesson from them: Fire departments routinely set small, controlled fires and practice putting them out. This is how they keep their firemen ready for action without endangering the community.

Therefore, I propose that we set up a fake government. This will give Congress something to practice on so they leave our real government alone. Congress could tinker to their heart’s content on the ersatz government’s Interstate Commerce Laws, run up a zillion-dollar deficit, and invest all the money in the Social Security Fund on Beanie Baby collectables without actually mucking about with the real world in which the rest of us live.

It’s the perfect answer to keep Congress poised for action without actually letting them do anything. I’d even be willing to give everybody in Congress a couple of stacks of ersatz dollars to keep in their freezers.

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Dan H. Woods has recently moved to France with his wife, two sons, three cats, and a Golden Retriever. His hobbies include woodworking and running marathons. At one time, Dan was also a Certified Beer Judge from the American Homebrewers Association. (It’s good work if you can find it.) Dan has lived at various times in Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Minnesota, Florida, and France. Dan is quick to point out that Minnesota is by far the coldest. Dan writes a weekly humor column called Tomfoolery & Codswallop. You can visit Dan’s website at www.tomfooleryandcodswallop.com where he welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns.