Donna and Rhonda

Or, A Political Allegory About Congress and the Debt Ceiling


Two sisters Donna and Rhonda run a store together. Every night, they go out to dinner. They always overspend, and they always charge it to their credit card.

They eat well. They order lobster, champagne, and chocolate cake. At the end of the night, there is always lots of extra food, and every night they get big doggie bags to take to their parents who live in a nursing home.

One night, Rhonda had a drink of a special kind of Tea that made her act a bit unpredictable. When the bill came, Rhonda looked at the prices and had a moment of panic.

"That's too much money. We can't afford that!" Rhonda said.

Donna nodded. "I know. But we have to eat, right? I’ll grab the credit card."

Rhonda looked at the bill, as if this were the first time she had ever seen it. "No, we can't spend money like that. I'm not paying it."

"What?" asked Donna, with some shock. "But we just ate all this food! Of course we have to pay for it."

Rhonda took another sip of her Special Tea. "Nope." She crossed her arms. "I'm not paying for it."

Donna tried to explain that regardless of how expensive the bill might be, they both knew what the prices were when they first sat down at the restaurant. "I'm sorry," Donna said calmly, "but we have to pay for it. We don't have a choice."

Rhonda began to get indignant. "No. You and I are not going to keep paying this much for food."

"OK, but--"

"--No buts!"

"--But we have to!" Donna protested. "We already ordered and ate this stuff! You can't just NOT pay. That would have awful consequences. We might get into trouble with our credit. And besides, not paying for a meal, in addition to being harmful to the people who provided us with the food and who work at this restaurant, such behavior would be quite rude," Donna explained. Rhonda scowled.

Donna added, "Plus, we share our one account, and I think we should pay our bill."

Rhonda sat up in her seat. "Well I'm not allowing you to pay the bill unless we make some drastic changes."

Donna fidgeted. "Like…what?"

Rhonda folded her arms. "Like we are going to cut our meal budget drastically." She gave Donna a figure she had in mind.

Donna bolted up. "But that's impossible! Forget fancy dining, we won't even be able to buy food! And what about the doggie bags? Our parents rely on us to give them food every night."

Rhonda responded angrily, "Well they should have thought about that beforehand. We are not in the business of giving out handouts to people who can't feed themselves."

Donna interrupted Rhonda. "Actually," she said, "that is exactly what we do. We've been doing it every day for as long as I can remember."

Clearly Rhonda didn't care. She started ranting and raving that they were spending too much, and she made a long list of items to cut from their budget. Some of the items were things Donna cared about deeply, and many were items Donna was pretty sure were essential for the two of them. Donna pointed to one item. "My car? But that is how we get to work. How are we going to work if I don't pay my car bills?"

Rhonda closed her eyes and stuck her nose in the air. "I don't care," she said. "We can't afford it. So no car payments."

Donna swallowed hard. "But I have to have a car," she protested.

"No car."

Donna looked at the list again. "Hey," she said to her sister, realizing what was happening. "How come most of these cuts are things I use and care about? My flowers, and my air conditioner and my water filter? What about you? How about cutting back on your collection of toy soldiers and water guns? Or how about cutting back on your pet project of that fence you're building? All it does is block the neighbors from coming over to help take care of our gardens. Let’s be honest, you and I don’t want to do all that work ourselves."

Rhonda became indignant. "These things are a matter of our security!" she yelled.

Donna huffed. “Well, at the store where we work you are always giving huge discounts and deals to some of the wealthier business owners who come in to shop for supplies. It seems like they are paying even less than some of the other people who buy stuff at our store.”

Rhonda almost screamed. “Absolutely not! That is definitely off the table! If we charged those business people any more, they wouldn’t be able to run their businesses! It’s the very rich people like them who build nice restaurants like this and who hire everyone else to work for them. I refuse to even talk to you if you are going to try and squeeze any more money from my rich friends.”

Looking around the restaurant, Donna had a moment of clarity. "Wait a minute. This is not about anything involving the rest of our spending habits. This is only about our dinner. We ordered food. The bill is here. We have to pay it. End of story. We've got to put it on our credit card."

Donna and Rhonda fought back and forth. The arguing got pretty heated and pretty loud, and they fought even until the very last minute the restaurant was open. Couples at other tables in the restaurant were baffled. They sneered and mocked the utter silliness of the situation.

In the end, Rhonda kept many of her toys and she kept giving discounts to the wealthy business people who shop at their store. And Donna had to explain to their parents why she and Rhonda wouldn't bring them food any more and, because she was going to have to sell her car, why they were no longer going to visit or be able to bring them flowers.