Wouldn’t it be delightful if Congress was forced to use our money more wisely and provide us a health plan as good as the lawmakers themselves enjoy?

It can’t happen, but just suppose …

The members of the U.S. Congress would not get any new pay hikes or benefits until they balanced the national budget and set up the mechanics to whittle the national deficit.

What if there was a sudden uprising of legislators to start spending less money than they are taking in? Or, at worst, if they were at least taking what they get and using it to the fullest advantage, without spending anything extra. No profit necessary, just breaking even would be marvelous.

The trouble is that our senators and representatives have fallen so deeply in love with spending other people’s money — ours — that they consider the treasury a bottomless pit that needs no regular and serious priming.

This is not to say that our Congress people are overpaid, but temporarily withholding raises might get them to show more respect to the money we are sending them and start using it more efficiently and prudently.

Take the issue of health care.

Anyone conversant with the subject declares that members of Congress, have “Cadillac” medical plans, wonderful coverage that any other citizen would be delirious to have. Yet the contentious forces in the two houses in Washington continue to argue and harangue and strive for oneupmanship and the average citizen does not know where to turn — while agonizing over poor or absent medical care.

Suppose that by some magic action we could take away the health care benefits of those in the House, the Senate and other upper levels of government, maybe even the White House, until they produced a sound, workable, all-encompassing health care plan that would reflect statesmanship and citizen protection rather than political bickering.

If Congress had its pay and benefits frozen until it could use our money to better advantage and if its members had to scrape for health care, as so many other Americans do, how soon would something substantial be accomplished for all of us?

Call it a wild dream if you choose. Yet just imagine how much better off we would be as a nation if members of Congress had to measure up to stricter standards of money-handling and had to develop for all of us a medical care plan as good as what they enjoy.