Washington, like much of the East Coast, was hit last week with brutally hot temperatures that topped 100 for several days straight. Usually I’m a believer in the science of climate change. My colleague Janet Redman’s article, “Connecting Extreme Weather Dots Across the Map” reinforces that belief. But after watching lawmakers in Washington, I’m beginning to think that it’s the hot air emanating from Congress that is behind this recent heat wave.

The rhetoric around the budget and the debt ceiling simply can’t get any hotter without melting down the country.

But we continue to be in an era in which Wall Street, instead of Main Street, reigns supreme. IPS expert Sarah Anderson blogged this week about the efforts of Wall Street lobbyists to repeal a simple requirement for companies to report incentive-based pay. Wall Street continues to oppose efforts to shut down overseas tax havens that could restore $1 trillion dollars to U.S. taxpayers, notes IPS expert Chuck Collins. A task force led by IPS expert Miriam Pemberton found that trimming just nine military programs could save $77 billion. And IPS’s World Beat editor John Feffer described the devastating effects of President Obama’s efforts to push for trade deals that could lead to further job losses and further enrich Wall Street.

Empowering Main Street, as David Korten suggests in his recent New Economy Working Group report, “How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule,” would get us on a better track. So would the commonsense measures that Chuck Collins outlined on the eve of the narrowly averted government shutdown a few months ago.

I tend to agree with the majority of Americans who don’t think turning up the rhetorical heat is going to win the day. We need to drop this destructive debate. Our shared economic and physical security depends on all of us working together, bound by shared values of fairness, justice, and equal opportunity.

Meanwhile, we stand in solidarity with the Norwegian people, who suffered a devastating act of violence this week. And we’re reminded by Saul Landau’s film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up, which was released nationwide this week, that terrorism is often defined by whose side you are on.