WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrat House leader Nancy Pelosi held her landmark 12,000th press conference today to unveil the controversial new congressional bill. “This is our promise to America,” Pelosi said. “If you get off your couch and vote for us in November, we’ll pay for you to sit at home on your lazy ass for the next four years.”
The bill would be the latest in a series of efforts, beginning with the bank bailouts and stimulus package of 2008, to help Americans feel better about losing their jobs and all of the nice things they used to own. Being paid by the government to sit at home will actually count as a full-time job, and some expect unemployment to drop nearly to zero. “Maybe even further than that,” one congressional aide told Newslo. “Nobody really knows.”
One of Pelosi’s staffers, who reportedly took an Economics class in college, stated in an interview, “People have the right to get paid to do nothing. There’s nothing more American than sitting at home watching Maury reruns and drinking Keystone Light.”
Democrat policymakers reasoned that if Americans cannot find jobs and are at home anyway, our government might as well give them money to do so. Political strategists see the bill as an attempt to get the poorer members on the couch where they belong come November.
The bill is proving particularly popular with one of the Democrats’ most important constituent groups: unemployed twenty-something English majors. Anticipating the thousands of Ivy League graduates who will suddenly give up the job search, the Congressional Budget Office is working on a list of recommended activities for hyper-educated actors and bloggers to occupy their new income and free time.
The bill was met with stiff opposition from senior citizens. Bruhilda Rothschild, a 70-year-old in Miami, reminded Newslo that, “Back in the day you couldn’t masturbate ten hours a day and still pay your rent.” But in order to appease voters over 65, Pelosi has proposed an amendment that would mandate large font sizes on all History Channel documentaries. In an interview one of her staffers stated: “And if they still don’t like this bill, we’ll just go ahead and cut social security—see how they feel when that happens.”
