We the People, Part 4: Our Valentine from Congress

While I was lolling about being self-indulgent last week, POTUS was handing out his budget. Even before the shrink wrap was off, Republicans and the Tea Party-ers were shouting, “Deeper! Deeper!”
 

    © 2011, Steven G. Artley, ARTLEY CARTOON

We must be prepared for cuts into the so-called entitlement programs which, depending on whom you ask, make up between 40%-60% of the federal budget. Those savvy Republicans have figured out there’s a bonus to be had by making artery deep cuts; not only will wasteful programs to help the poor disappear, those people enabling those programs will also disappear.  Lay ‘em off and you don’t have to pay ‘em! This will save millions.

Plus, once those people no longer have jobs, we won’t need those death panels the Tea Party keeps talking about. The unemployed who can no longer afford health care should, if they get sick, have the good sense to just die, thereby saving the government even more! Not only do we save on health care, we won’t ever have to pay them Social Security because they’ll never make it to entitlement age.

But wait, there’s more! All those underemployed service industry burger flippers are also going to find themselves downsized because there will be fewer people to buy Big Macs. But that’s okay; they didn’t really make a living wage anyway, and when any sort of unemployment benefit ends, they, too, will enter the death track. Here’s where the President helps out: with his cost cutting measure of underfunding the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, they really won’t be able to heat their houses, so they will get sick and just die. More savings!

Now let’s take a quick peek at the education system. Decimation of school funding on both state and federal levels will excise all non-basic classes thereby ensuring kids get no enrichment or exercise whatsoever while ensuring huge class sizes. Now this might not seem to be an optimal situation, but wait for it….it’s great. You’ve got 50-60 kids packed into a classroom designed to hold 30 on a bad day. Way too many of the kids have unemployed or underemployed parents who have no health care. All it takes is one kid with a cold. Since there’s no longer a school nurse (she’s probably been laid off in a staff reduction) the kid has no one to tell him to go home and then he/she will infect the rest of the class. In turn, they’ll go home and infect their families and voila! they’ll die, too, thereby saving the government even more. Class size will shrink as a result, as will school staffing requirements.

At the same time, the rich, paying even less in taxes thanks to those tax cuts for the already wealthy, will get richer and will be able to hire household help. Now that the ranks of the service industry sector has been decimated by disease and are no longer available to service them, the rich will have to import illegal aliens. Since everyone knows you don’t have to pay illegals a living wage or provide them with benefits like health care, the rich will get even richer and will be able to invest their gains in companies that continue to off shore jobs to places with no discernible human rights, like China (who by the way, does provide health care for its citizens) and then bank those gains off shore in places like the Caymans so they don’t have even have to pay taxes on those profits. See, this is a great thing!

Now, there is a very slight downside. With the middle and lower classes dying off like that, there may be a minor problem with remains disposal, but that’s another issue. The rich might have to chip in to build some ovens or something like that, but they might decide it’s more cost effective to just cart the bodies over to the nearest large body of water to toss ‘em in. But hey! It’s organic!

You shouldn’t feel bad about any of this. It really is the new American Way. Just ask the Tea Party. Just think of it as the government’s valentine to America.

      The Wifely Person's Tip o' the Week...courtesy of Jonathan Swift

"Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than 
the whole race of politicians put together."