Birth of a Notion (Bumped)

DR. JILL BIDEN: The President's getting ready for his afternoon game of shuffle ball on the South Lawn.  He's looking in virtually.  [speaks to screen on wall] You OK, dear?

JOE BIDEN: I'm good.   Everyone, Dr. Jill will run the meeting.  I’ll be along in a bit.  Kamala, take notes.  And keep it short, people.  I wanna go for ice cream in Delaware before supper.  Ron, have Air Force One gassed and ready.

RON KLAIN: Uh, before you get to your game, Mr. President, Senator Sanders has delivered a dozen more extra-constitutional executive orders he wants you to sign.

DR. JILL: Klain, look at me when you talk to him.

 

 

BIDEN: Jeez Louise!  That's what, forty EOs Bernie's shoved in my face since the inauguration.  Maybe I just give him my autopen.

KLAIN: He is aggressive, sir.  On the plus side, by the time appeals to overturn them reach SCOTUS, we’ll have packed the Court.  Game over.

BARACK OBAMA: What’s the first order, Ron?

KLAIN: Expanding abortion rights.  We’ve already pushed the envelope to allow mothers to abort fetuses after they’ve exited the womb. This order extends a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy up to one year after birth.

DR. JILL: His rationale?

KLAIN: Women need more time to determine if they can handle the responsibility of raising a child.   

DR. JILL: If the answer is “no”?

KLAIN: The order permits them to euthanize the potential life form before it becomes fully human at, say, around two. 

[enter the president]

OBAMA: Hmm. Then we  encourage women in this position to work with Planned Parenthood’s licensed body parts harvesters.

BIDEN: Man, that’s tough.  Hey, I got an idea: you’re not sure you wanna keep the proto human life form, you don’t cut the umbilical cord until you’ve made up your mind.  The cord stays on, so what's at the end of it is still part of the woman's body, which is hers to do with as she pleases.

DR. JILL: Works for me. 

KLAIN: The second order recognizes the right of the nation’s LGBTQ animal population to live their lives free from discrimination or hate speech arising from whose butt they just sniffed.

DR JILL: I can live with that.  But include a provision allowing federally funded trans-species surgery if, say, a dog thinks it should have been born a cat. 

KLAIN: Time for one more: Senator Sanders thinks D. C. and Puerto Rico will become states in the near future, padding our numbers in the House and Senate.

BIDEN: So?

KLAIN:  But he believes the Party needs more breathing room.  He recommends cutting California in half, demarcation line being just south of San Francisco-Oakland.  State of Northern California, State of Southern California.  Two more Senate seats.

BIDEN:  No way, José.  The courts will squash us flat with restraining orders.

OBAMA: So we pay no attention to judges or legalities.  Who’s going to enforce orders that we desist?  Us?

DR. JILL: One last thing: how do we ensure next year’s midterms don’t cost us the House and Senate?

SUSAN RICE: We keep giving money to people to stay home instead of work—a powerful incentive to vote Democrat.

BIDEN: I . . .

DR. JILL:  Shuddup, Joe.  I disagree, Susan.  Too speculative. Another idea?  Janet?

JANET YELLEN: We could cut the unemployment rate to zero by hiring all fifteen million officially unemployed to locate and register the sixteen million who’ve stopped looking for work.

BIDEN: Whoa! Then I can truthfully say I created fifteen million good jobs. But what do we do with them when they finish their assignments and identify the sixteen million give-uppers?

RICE: We hire all thirty-one million as Labor Department information specialists. Their job: locate and identify the nation’s twenty million underemployed.

DR. JILL: And then?

OBAMA: I know.  On condition they employ the folks we hired to find them, we award the underemployed federal grants and tax breaks to start or expand small businesses, guaranteeing government to be the primary purchaser of their goods and services.  Failure is impossible.

BIDEN: Let’s go that route, OK Jill?  Oh, man, two years from now, we’ll be dealing with a labor shortage. Can we hold Trump responsible should that happen?