Oz Sighting #3: The Caucus That Wasn’t There
A couple of years ago I got laid off the week before Thanksgiving.
Anyone who has been through that moment knows the feeling. You’re already stretched thin, and suddenly the ground drops out. You lay awake at night, doing the math over and over, trying to figure out how to make the holidays work — how to create enough magic that your kids don’t notice the fear sitting just underneath everything. Parents do this all the time. We absorb the stress so our children don’t have to carry it, but the winter holidays are a different season altogether.
This year, that feeling came back — not just for me, but for a lot of families across Oregon. For two months we watched the federal government shut itself down in a standoff over the debt ceiling. The same politicians who spent years warning about fiscal responsibility decided the way to prove their point was to stop authorizing the basic functions of government, and show their power by making people go hungry. In the richest nation in the history of the world. Right as winter started. Right as families were heading into the holidays.
Across Oregon, hundreds of thousands of people rely on food assistance to make ends meet. When the shutdown dragged on, families began to wonder whether those benefits would continue. Food banks prepared for the surge they knew was coming. Parents quietly started calculating how far groceries could stretch, how long into the break before their teenagers literally ate all the food in the house.
For a political movement that spent fifteen years talking about a so-called “War on Christmas,” it’s worth asking: What exactly do you call threatening families’ ability to feed their kids during the holiday season?
But the story doesn’t stop there.
Because the same caucus that shut down the government over fiscal discipline had no trouble allowing multiple unauthorized military adventures for a DOD out of control. The same leaders who preach a need for individual personal accountability are willing to spend our resources on a whim. Never mind the actions are totally illegal and ill advised. Bombs moved quickly, budgets suddenly don’t matter, and now we’re facing the consequences of decisions made with no clear exit strategy and no visible accountability.
The United States is spending obscene sums each day to sustain pointless military operations. Fuel prices are going up, global tensions are getting worse, military resources, including munitions desperately needed by allies like Ukraine, are pulled into new Middle East meddling.
And the people who insisted on fiscal responsibility when it came to feeding families? They’ve largely disappeared from the conversation: no clear explanation, no plan, no accountability. Right now American politics seems a lot like the Cowardly Lion, except scaled up to an entire congressional caucus. Roaring when the stakes are symbolic, standing firm when the cameras are on, and then vanishing when real consequences arrive.
But when leaders disappear, the consequences don’t. They land on states. They land on governors, food banks, teachers, and families trying to hold their lives together. That’s the real lesson of this moment.
Oregon families should not have to wonder whether their kids can eat because Congress decided to stage another round of political theater. If the federal government has become unreliable, states have a responsibility to build resilience.
That means stronger local food systems so families aren’t one congressional vote away from hunger. It means building circular supply chains and regional agriculture that keep both food and money circulating inside our communities. It means recognizing that care, food security, and public health are infrastructure, just as much as roads or power lines.
And it means having the courage to say something simple out loud: A society that can afford bombs can afford to feed its children.
In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion spends most of the story roaring loudly about bravery he doesn’t actually have. But the real lesson of that story is quieter. Courage isn’t the roar. Courage is staying in the room when things get hard.
Right now, Oregon needs leadership that understands the difference. Because if Washington is going to keep staging Oz-like performances behind the curtain, then our job here is to build something real enough that families don’t pay the price for it.
Have you seen Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Cowardly Lion politics show up in your community, your workplace, or your experience navigating public systems? Submit an Oz Sighting at runninganyway.com. Anonymous submissions welcome. Critique the behavior, name the impact, no pile-ons.
Good governance requires a brain, a heart, and courage. We don't have a leadership shortage. We have a willingness shortage.
