KINDER'S COMMENTARY: D.C. TRIP IS LIKE A VOYAGE TO UNREALITY

A quick trip to Washington, D.C., from Sunday through Tuesday morning to attend a meeting gave me a chance to see our nation's capitol close-up for the first time in some months. I arrived, of course, at the time that the local D.C. news media were simply going berserk over the impending shutdown of the government -- or rather what is called, in the current, rather delicate phrase -- shutting down the government's "non-essential services." There were banner headlines in all the papers and almost round-the-clock television stakeouts, complete with man-on-the-street interviews with ordinary citizens.

Now, what with Washington's being a company town, when media mavens stick a microphone in front of men and women on the streets of the District of Columbia, they're likely to be interviewing -- surprise! -- a federal employee. Guess whose side they're going to take? Whose side, that is, will most federal employees take in a dispute between a Congress determined to introduce fiscal discipline in a town determined to resist it, and a demagogue of a president who pays lip service to fiscal discipline while thwarting every serious effort to achieve it?

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Just wondering: What if they shut down a government and nobody noticed?

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It is impossible to visit Washington and not come away with a sense of how astonishingly affluent the community is. What has occurred since the 1950s, with the amazing growth in federal spending and bureaucracies, is one of the most awesome transfers of wealth in the history of the world. The Washington of Pat Buchanan's boyhood in the 1950s was a sleepy Southern town that happened to be the home of a few tens of thousands of people who worked for the federal government. The wealth transfer of the last 30 years has, of course, been from producers in America's working industries to the what some scholars have called the New Class of bureaucratic elites.

As the billions -- no, trillions -- of dollars have flowed from America's producers to our masters on the Potomac, living standards in the D.C. area have risen to the highest in America. By any standard, the affluence is truly amazing. Example: Of the 10 wealthiest counties in America, five of them ring D.C. in Maryland and Virginia. Washington doesn't produce anything, of course. Its only industry is government and the parasitic, New Class elites of bureaucracy and "consulting." On what subjects do the Washington consultants consult? Mostly about how to keep the trillions flowing to the correct groups of politically favored recipients. This is really what is behind all the sound and fury over the federal budget battle.

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A Monday morning visit with Sen. John Ashcroft in his office left me thinking of "If," the Rudyard Kipling poem, with its wonderful line, "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you ... ."

Showing a sense of perspective all too rare in Washington, John Ashcroft displayed a healthy sense of amusement at all the hysteria going on around us in the Federal City. It is an amusement that I certainly share. He correctly observed that the federal government has been through no fewer than nine of these little episodes since 1980.

Crisis? Hardly.

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I joined Rep. Bill Emerson for lunch on Monday. As I left him while he headed off to a 2 p.m. Agriculture Committee hearing, I was deeply moved and heartened about his determined attitude in battling the lung cancer that currently bedevils him. I told him that so many friends and constituents had asked to be remembered to him, and had asked that he be told they are praying for a speedy recovery, that I could scarcely begin to name them all. He said for me to tell folks that the outpouring of love and support has been truly overwhelming. Interestingly, he said that among his well-wishers was Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston, one of the great leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and the former bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese. Bill is looking forward to a visit when the cardinal comes to Washington next week.

I can tell you that Bill Emerson's voice is strong, his grip is strong, his spirits are strong and his determination to beat this thing is strong. He lost more than 60 pounds on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet earlier this year and so is in fighting trim to conquer the tumor. I told Bill that I would be redoubling my prayers for his complete recovery. You can help by doing the same. You can also help by dropping him a note of encouragement at 2268 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.