Averting the sequestration that looms like an iceberg dead ahead of the United States’ ship of state should be Congress’ next priority.

The Congressional deal that averted our going off the “fiscal cliff” at the beginning of the year did not, unfortunately, solve the problems of pending spending cuts and revenue shortfalls. The language of the bill merely forestalled the date by which Congress must act to prevent government spending cuts that economic analysts and the White House say “would have a devastating impact on important defense and nondefense programs.” Now the spending cuts begin soon, on Friday, March 1.

This situation requires action.

The possibilities are as numerous as the number of perspectives on governmental actions. My own preference is action that passes a budget for a whole fiscal year instead of continuing resolutions that postpone thought and decision, lower spending to arrest the development of a huge class of Americans who depend in some way on the government, and increases payments toward reducing the national debt.

But anything is preferable to nothing.

Procrastination is one of the great ills of society. Ask any student, and he or she probably will tell you that parents and teachers have admonished him since a young age against doing tomorrow what could be done today.

There are a few legitimate reasons for procrastination. The innumerable tasks before us require some prioritization; it would be improper of us to consider and resolve a small annoyance before dealing with a problem that threatens our way of life. By nearly all accounts, failing to stop the sequestration of federal spending presents the latter kind of task. It is the lesser, not the greater, problems that should be procrastinate or put off, and we should do so for the sake of addressing the larger ones.

There is a word for failing to address until the latest possible moments such a “fiscal cliff” as we face: lazy. The members of Congress, if they failed to do something to put our fiscal house in order, would be, in the words of a wise, sage man, “a bunch of bums.”

Inaction in this situation would be the opposite of productivity, industry, ambition and health. It contaminates public life with the feeling that the members of Congress can enact laws (as the Constitution says) “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” as it suits them, not the people for whom those laws are to be made. American citizens should not find themselves almost universally saying the same words sung by a character from the musical “Les Miserables”: “Where are the leaders of the land? / Where are the swells who run this show?”

In the absence of an established church, especially without one that uses a rigid hierarchy, such as Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism; in the absence of a nobility that holds certain legal privileges and exists in a feudal relationship with inferiors and superiors; in the absence of any social role-models apart from those that a person willfully adopts; the leaders of the United States are its politicians, especially the president and members of Congress. The only kind of social distinction that we all must recognize is the holding of public office. Every other kind of esteem or high regard that a person can receive from others is the choice of the giver. But everyone — even the people who did not vote for a victorious candidate — must admit that office holders are in some way special.

So why do they think they can get away with doing nothing? Even the most partisan of congressional districts (Republican and Democrat alike) elected their representatives to office so that they could do work. And yet, although members of Congress obviously postpone their confrontations with the biggest challenges the United States faces, we continue to pay their salaries and benefits.

In a complete reversal of a speech made by Winston Churchill — that “Never in the field of conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” — never have so few owed so much to so many.

As we gaze upon a tradition of heinous adherence to party rather than truly public service, all that we can do is hope that they rise to the occasion made for them by taking the oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

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Michael Belding is a graduate student in history from Story City, Iowa.