The Onion Reports: U.S. Government to Save Billions by Cutting Wasteful Senator Program
In an effort to reduce wasteful spending and eliminate non-vital federal services, the U.S. government announced plans this week to cut its long-standing senator program, a move it says will help save more than $300 billion each year.
An analysis conducted last week revealed a number of troubling flaws within the long-running, heavily subsidized program, including a lack of consistent oversight, no clear objectives or goals, the persistent hiring of unqualified and selfishly motivated individuals, and a 100 percent redundancy rate among its employees.
Moreover, the study found that the U.S. government already funds a fully operational legislative body that appears to do the exact same job as the Senate, but which also provides a fair and proportional representation of the nation’s citizens and has rules in place to prevent one individual from holding the operations of the entire chamber hostage until he is guaranteed massive federal spending projects for his home state of Alabama.
Eat it, bitches
Great idea, as long as they send me the check for $300 billion instead.
@1 ftw
Ugh. Typically cloaked, unenlightened faux-commentary from the Onion.
Can there really be that many out there who hate the filibuster right now but DON’T REMEMBER that it saved us from Cheney pissing all over the Constitution??
If not for the filibuster, Medicare, Social Security, the EPA, the NEA, and quite possibly the IRS woulda died in 2005.
Jackasses with their shortsightedness.
I can’t recall any filibustering during the Cheney years. Refresh my memory?
@4: i seem to recall Cheney regularly pissing all over the Constitution, and the democratic Senators pissing all over themselves for fear of being seen as unpatriotic. reconciliation was used for both tax cuts, so the filibuster paid no part there. the Senate is the House of Lords with all the power and no sense of noblesse oblige.
PLAYED, not PAID.
I’ll bet we’d save lots more money if we encouraged the south to secede again, this time with our blessing.
Sure we hate the Senatards, but it’s easy to forget that without the Senate, the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment would be easily sailing to full ratification now.
IAWTP. Only in America would we have a system where representatives of as few as 12% of the population have the power to hamstring progress. (And those combinations tend to be red ones.)
@4: You’re on crack. The filibuster was only used under the Cheney years to oppose nominees to U.S. Circuit Court judges. In the end 3 of those 5 filibustered judges were confirmed. It wasn’t used for Patriot Act, or the creation of DOHS, or warrantless wiretaps, or anything remotely related to piss or the Constitution.
@8: Can we do the same with Eastern WA?
@4 Please stop beating your editorial breast over a news parody.
Cute, but anybody else remember the other congressional suggestion posted on Slog the other day?
Can we just “redistrict” state borders and have only a senate with equal representation?
Checks and balances, people, checks and balances.
Can I get a check for $500 million? I promise to use it for useful things.