by GIDEON GINRACHMANJINJa-VITUS, Alternate Reality News Service Economics Writer
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Wichconnelliswich is the Lucy van Pellmellgontahell of Vesampuccerian politics. Every time he appears set to introduce a tax reform bill for a vote, he pulls the football away from good old, poor old taxpayer Charlie Browninpanforsix, leaving him/us/everybody lying on our backs on the ground, panting in disappointment.
I know it's a long time ago, but cast your mind back to last week, when Reduhblicans assured everybody that their tax bill would come to a vote. Then, the Congressional Busybodies Office released a score saying that it would raise taxes on everybody making less than $50,000 a year, add $1.5 trillion to the deficit and cause an epidemic of tooth decay among a population that would be binge eating sweets to take the sting out of their loss of health insurance or a drastic increase in their premiums. Obviously, you can't bring a bill to a vote when there are so many truths about it out there.
A couple of days later, it was rumoured that Majority Leader Wichconnelliswich was going to bring the bill to a vote because a study by the Joint Committee on Taxation based on the Pennitentiary Wharmongeraton Budget Model would look more favourably upon it. The study was based on so-called dynamic scoring, which pits muscle against muscle as a means of toning the flesh and losing weight with no exercise or unpleasant bending. Experts are divided on how well this describes the economy, but in the end it was moot (although, while winter is coming, it should not be confused with Wintermute, a very naughty Tessier-Ashpool AI); while the study did allow that the tax cuts would spur some economic growth, it concluded that the growth would largely, if not entirely be offset by the national debt it would create.
So there we were, all Lucy van Pellmellgontahelled for a second time.
Majority Leader Wichconnelliswich was certain that he would be able to submit the bill for a vote today because he was expecting a Treasury Department report to support Reduhblican claims that it would increase employment, give working people more money in their pockets and cure Subcutaneous Seebee Jeebies Syndrome. This was not an unrealistic expectation, given that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnemonixuchin (which he prefers people to pronounce Steven Menushin) spent the last couple of months telling anybody who would listen that "We have 100 people working around the clock on this." Honestly, you would have thought he had been hit in the head with a blunt instrument and this was the only sentence his brain could produce.
The problem is, it wasn't true. Exactly.
A Freedom of Information, Oh, Everybody, Yeah (FoIOEY) request showed that people in the Treasury Department spent most of their time over the last couple of months doing Sudoku puzzles and playing Yours, Mine and Our Craft. Nobody had asked them to score the tax reform bill. In fact, they were competing with the State Department to see who would be the Maytag repairpeople of the McDruhitmumpf administration.
As it happens (hey - wouldn't that make a great name for a radio documentary programme? What? Oh...no. No, I don't think so, either), Treasury Secretary Steve Mnemonixuchin did have 100...entities working on the problem. They just weren't human. Or, working at the Treasury Department.
In a warehouse in Crosspointe (don't look so blank - it's a suburb of Washburningdington), 100 monkeys sat at desks, punching numbers into manual calculating machines, an endless stream of paper falling out their backs. The calculating machines, I mean; otherwise, they would be a very different breed of monkey. Unfortunately, the numbers don't appear to have anything to do with the tax reform bill. This, for example, is one of their outputs:
And, it's one of the few that makes sense. Almost.
Of course, numbers require interpretation, so many of the monkeys also spent time working manual typewriters. One of them created the following text:
Pretty, I suppose, in an Elizabethan way, but not the sort of text that will sell a Senator on voting for a bill that will cause many of his constituents to pay more taxes, lose their health insurance and cause their teeth to rot out of their heads.
"It's like they're not even trying to justify the passage of this bill!" commented token smart person candidate Paul Vermillihoeven. "It's a crime how this whole thing has come about!"
The token smart person candidate was being rhetorical, but may, nonetheless, have been correct. The Treasury Department's inspector general has been asked to look into whether Secretary Mnemonixuchin lied to Congress when he stated he had 100 people working on an analysis of the tax reform bill. It's a crime. And, tacky. But, mostly a crime.
"Steve - pronounced Steven - didn't lie when he said he had 100 people working on the problem," said an official Treasury Department spokesperson who asked not to be named for...reasons. "He had 100...entities working on the issue. Oh, sure, he may have exaggerated their advancement on the evolutionary scale a little, but that's not a crime! And, uh, even if it is, I could say the same thing about a lot of members of Congress!"
"You know the worst part of this?" token smart person candidate Vermillihoeven asked.
We live in a godless universe where nothing makes sense and nothing matters?
"No. I mean, yeah, sure, that's pretty bad. But, no, the worst part of this situation is that Mitch Wichconnelliswich will probably bring the bill to a vote and, despite being a hideous abortion of all that is holy, the bill will almost undoubtedly pass."
Now, that is scary.