So the world didn’t end after all. Congress finally acted, and we have achieved great things. After the government shut down, we now have a temporary budget that allows the Treasury to spend money again to pay salaries and utility bills on government operations, and to fund other programs. The terror of the default on the bonds has also been set aside, and once again, we are free to borrow from the Chinese to pay those salaries and utility bills that we have already incurred without any means of paying them other than borrowing from the Chinese.

So the end of the world has been postponed, at least until Jan. 15 on the budget authorization, and Feb. 7 on the debt ceiling, when we get to do this all over again. There is a sense of optimism, that belies years of actual experience, that this time is different. This time, the House and Senate will come to an agreement on their very different budget proposals. This time there will be meaningful reform of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare that have escalating costs and shrinking income due to demographic changes. If people would only die abruptly at 66 like they used to instead of this hanging around until their 90s, getting hips and knees replaced. The corrupt tax code will be reformed in a way that has General Electric paying at least as much income tax as you do. This miraculous agreement that alters the very foundation of American society will all be worked out by mid-December. Right.

It’s a tall task, and Congress is approaching it the way they approach everything. They have gone on vacation. Yes, after saving the world from a disaster that didn’t exist except for Congress having created it, they have tamed their own monster and decided to kick back and have a few weeks off. There aren’t many people who can take routine housekeeping and turn it into a potential nuclear melt-down, defer the actual work of solving it for another day, and claim it is such a victory that they deserve to take the rest of the month off.

At the center of the circus was none other than Utah’s junior senator, Mike Lee. Lee played Robin to Ted Cruz’s Batman. Lee was at Cruz’s side at every crazy juncture of this soap opera, including a big event that had all the trappings of a Klan rally, with one of the featured speakers denouncing Obama as a Muslim who needed to leave Washington. He demanded that Obama come out of the White House with his hands up. Yes, and there was Mike Lee, right in the center of the crazy. In the end, Lee was one of 18 senators who voted to default on the national debt.

Our own pillar of courage, Rep. Rob Bishop, did what he does best. He has gone into hiding through all of this, lest he be caught with his fingerprints on a decision. He joined 144 members of the House in voting to default on the debt. In a stranger move, Bishop is claiming that the president acted illegally in closing the national parks and monuments. Let’s see, if there is no appropriation, it is illegal for the president to spend money. Appropriations come from Congress, except when they won’t do their job and the appropriation runs out. So when the spending authority, which comes from Congress, ends, the president can’t spend. So he can’t pay park rangers to provide everything from basic security to sewage treatment at the national parks, which means that to avoid damage to the resource, he has to close them. But somehow, it’s the president’s problem that Congress won’t do its job. With thinking like that, it’s curious that Bishop hasn’t risen to leadership ranks in the GOP after all these years.

But no last minute deal to solve a manufactured crisis would be complete without a side order of bacon. The final deal included a special appropriation of about $2 billion for a dam under construction in Kentucky. Funding for that, like funding for everything else, has been whacked by the “sequester,” which was the spawn of Congress’s last failure to do its job. It was going to cost $80 million to mothball the project, so they decided instead to throw $2 billion to Kentucky in this emergency funding bill. To save money. I’m sure it was purely a coincidence that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky.

We could replace the Utah delegation with the first six winos to stumble out of Pioneer Park and get better representation that we have now.

In the end, it was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.