I’ve been thinking the past few days about my former congressman, the late Jack Brooks, a crusty Democrat who served Southeast Texas for more than four decades before getting beat in that landmark 1994 Republican sweep of Congress.

Jack used to refer to himself as Sweet Old Brooks, which translates into the initials SOB. He was proud of his irascible nature. In fact, Brooks embodied the saying of members of Congress that so-and-so “may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB.”

Some polling has come out in recent days that suggests American voters may be more likely than at any time in memory to throw out their congressman or woman in the next election, largely because of the trumped-up drama that took us once more to the brink of defaulting on our financial obligations.

The faux drama ended late Wednesday when the Senate leadership cobbled together a deal to reopen part of the federal government and lift the debt ceiling so we can pay our bills.

The consequences of defaulting are quite chilling to consider. The financial markets would have collapsed, taking millions of Americans’ retirement accounts into the crapper.

Still, with that prospect hanging over Americans’ heads, a number of senators and House members voted against the deal to prevent the default. Who voted no? Among them were Texas’s two GOP senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and my current Republican member of Congress, Mac Thornberry.

Thornberry said on TV tonight that he voted “no” because the deal didn’t solve any problems; it only postponed for a few months a situation that he thinks will repeat itself when the debt ceiling is set to expire once more.

I guess my question for the dissenters is this: How would you propose to solve all those problems at the last minute?

I’ll concede that the political system is badly broken. However, Thornberry, Cornyn and Cruz all are part of what ails it. They, of course, blame the other party — just as the other party blames them.

So, to fix the problem they proposed letting the government default on its debts, allowing the economy to crash, keeping federal employees furloughed and maintaining maximum dysfunction in our federal government. Reminds me of the old Vietnam War axiom of “destroying the village in order to save it.”

To think that some folks still wonder why Congress’s approval rating is in the sewer.