I occasionally pop into record stores to look for old Merle Haggard, C.W. McCall, and David Allan Coe albums (among some less savory remnants of my 80s youth). Last weekend I was flipping through the dollar section looking for a haunted house sound collection of all things, and ran across a soundtrack for a movie I’d never heard of: Li’l Abner^•, a film from 1959.

On this album, there’s a song called “The Country’s in the Very Best of Hands”.

The Treasury says the national debt is climbing to the sky,
And government expenditures have never been so high.
It makes a fella get a gleam of pride within his eye,
To see how our economy expands.
The country’s in the very best of hands.

The farm bill should be 89 percent of parity,
Another fella recommends it should be 93!
But 80, 95% who cares about degree?
It’s parity that no one understands.
The country’s in the very best of hands!

Us voters is connected to the nominee,
The nominee’s connected to the Treasury,
When he ain’t connected to the Treasury,
He sets around on his thigh-bone.

They sets around in this place they got,
This big congressional parking lot.
Just sits around on their you-know-what,
Up there they calls ’em their thigh bones.

Them bones, them bones gonna, rise again,
Gonna exercise the franchise again,
Gonna tax us up to our eyes again,
When he gets up offa them thigh bones.
The country’s in the very best of hands!

Them GOPs and Democrats each hates the other one,
They’s always criticizing how the country should be run,
But neither tells the public what the other’s gone and done,
As long as no one knows where no one stands,
The country’s in the very best of hands!

The money that they taxes us, that’s known as revenues,
They compound the collateral subtracts the residues,
Don’t worry ’bout the principal and interest that accrues,
They’re shippin’ all that stuff to foreign lands.
The country’s in the very best of hands!

Apparently I’m not the only one to think of our government’s reaction to the current situation on hearing this song from the musical.