Our country is in crisis in more ways than one.

For weeks, Americans have watched a high-stakes game of political chicken between Congress and the White House and wondered if our government is going bankrupt. Meanwhile, that very same government is chugging steadily onward in its quest to make life risk-free . . . regardless of cost and inconvenience.

What’s up this time? Are the feds proposing a full-body scan of every airline, rail, bus and ship passenger? Are they considering inspecting every shipping container arriving in an American port?

Does Uncle Sam want air marshals on every commercial flight?

No. He wants farmers to get licenses to drive their tractors.

The U.S. Department of Transportation believes tractors on the highway are a threat to public safety. They reason that, because a farmer is the operator of a commercial enterprise, he should have a commercial driver’s license before pulling his John Deere onto the pavement.

That’s right, not just a driver’s license, but a commercial driver’s license — a CDL. A farmer pulling his hay baler down a farm-to-market road would need the same license as an 18-wheeler driver pulling a 20-ton load on Interstate 35.

Agricultural groups across the country, including the Texas Farm Bureau, are irate at DOT, which is now accepting comments on its proposal. They’re not only telling the agency it’s a bad idea, but are asking members of Congress to pressure the agency into backing off.

Congress, of course, is a little preoccupied these days. It may be a while before it can get around to this dust-up.

For those of us among the nation’s dwindling corps of tractor jockeys, from full-time farmers to part-time ranchers, this is an unexpected poke in the eye. Given a choice between grubbing mesquite on an August afternoon and driving a tractor on a highway, most of us would ask you to pass the hoe.

Driving a tractor at 15 mph with highway traffic whizzing past is not our idea of a good time, but sometimes there’s no other practical way to get it from one field to another. So we turn on our flashers, stay as far on the shoulder as possible and wave drivers around when it’s safe to pass.

Many farmers already have a CDL, but they’d be the first to tell you that the training and testing for that license didn’t have anything to do with driving a Massey Ferguson.

They’d also hasten to tell you that not everybody who moves farm equipment from one meadow to the next is a farmer. More than one agriculturist’s wife has been drafted to drive the rake tractor and few have ever studied for the CDL.

There’s also the matter of age. To get an interstate CDL — and because we’re dealing with a federal agency here, presumably that’s the license they’d require — you have to be 21 years of age. That means those strapping 18-year-olds still chowing down at Farmer Jones’ table couldn’t get a license and couldn’t legally drive the Farmall from the homeplace to the rented land down the road.

Because most farm and ranch operations are family affairs, these are very real considerations. But in modern-day America, it shouldn’t be surprising that the DOT failed to take such things into account.

With each generation, fewer Americans have ties to agriculture and the land. Even here in Waco, with corn fields starting at the city limits sign, thousands of kids grow up without ever setting foot in a barn.

According to the 2010 census, America’s rural population has fallen to 16 percent — including those who live in small towns. Only about 2 percent of Americans actually live on farms, and less than 1 percent of us claim farming as an occupation.

America has become a nation of folks without the personal experience to appreciate how tough it is to grow their groceries. That’s why the most agriculturally blessed nation in the world so often shoots itself in the foot when it comes to policies that affect rural life.

And that’s a crisis you don’t hear discussed often enough in American politics.

Donnis Baggett is publisher and editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald and a weekend rancher. His email address is dbaggett@wacotrib.com.