The last thing the public needed this year was more political brinkmanship. In 2020, governments asked the public to stop working, traveling, gathering, and “just stay home.” The goal was to “stop the spread” or “flatten the curve.” The result is millions of lost jobs, thousands of delayed medical procedures, and diminished educational attainment for America’s students. Now, on top of all this, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is steering Congress toward a disruptive government shutdown.

To be clear, Congress had all year to hammer out an agreement on appropriating money for congressionally funded government operations. In a perfect world, Congress would vote on the various department appropriations one by one before Sept. 30, and then, work would begin on the next year’s spending. This would avoid the now-annual tradition of releasing thousand-page “omnibus” packages just days before the government runs out of money. Methodically negotiating and voting on each appropriation would allow members of Congress to address narrower issues in certain areas where Congress spends our hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

On October 31, 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto changed the world. Someone, or several people, writing under the pseudonym of Satoshi published the Bitcoin Whitepaper. The cryptography was brilliant. It used Markov chains and a distributed ledger to provide what has become the world’s most secure, internet-connected, computing network. But that wasn’t the goal. Bitcoin launched a true rival to gold as a store of value. And Bitcoin launched a true rival to fiat currency whose primary utility has devolved to a means of exchange and unit of account. Finally, Bitcoin did this in a way that was secure, private, and unstoppable.

To watch cable news or read a major daily newspaper these days, a foreigner visiting the United States would have a bleak outlook on the future of America. Unless of course, more people visited western Ohio. Obviously, my work in Congress involves travelling back and forth to fulfill my responsibilities in both Ohio and D.C. But every August, tradition dictates that Members stay home and spend more time with our neighbors and constituents. People love to refer to August as a “recess” from Congress, but this month-long work period is often one of the busiest parts of my year.

As the nation continues to adjust and adapt to life in a pandemic, it is more important than ever that America’s elected leaders understand how the policies imposed from Washington (many over my objections) affect the people who elected us. Perhaps most urgently, people have wanted to share their reactions to state executive orders that effectively closed our economy, deemed some activities essential and others non-essential, and threaten to further disrupt work, school, sports, and much more. In light of that and the related public health crisis, this August is the perfect opportunity to observe the impacts of CARES Act—the trillion-dollar coronavirus relief bill.

It’s been 244 years since the course of human events directed a group of American statesmen to declare their independence, based upon self-evident truths and individuals’ God-given natural rights. The Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776, marked a shift in the political history of humankind. Until that point, nation states came into being through accident of geography and unbridled right of conquest.

The Thirteen Colonies, however made a conscious decision to unite under enlightenment ideals, filtered through the Christian preachers and pulpits of the day. This was a critical difference between the enlightenment in America, which ended in liberty, and the enlightenment in France, which ended in the guillotine. In the process, the Founding Fathers laid the foundations of liberal governments throughout the world. In the American Enlightenment, intellectual speculation for learned scholars became instead a revolution embraced by people of all backgrounds, stations, and faiths. Never had a government acknowledged the natural rights of all individuals.