Government Accidentally Shuts Itself Down With Ban On Non-Essential Businesses

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congress has asked all non-essential businesses to limit their hours or close entirely for an undetermined amount of time.

But this shutdown mistakenly shut down the most non-essential entity of all: the government. For a brief period of time, all government in the United States was illegal, since it is completely non-essential to everything.

“Oops,” said Senator Mitch McConnell. “We meant non-essential private businesses. Of course, the government is always essential, even when it’s not doing anything or is making things worse.”

Senators, congresspeople, and bureaucrats frantically rewrote the ban to include only businesses that actually produced something and not government agencies that just watched other people make stuff. Though they had dragged their feet on passing bills related to relieving the financial distress of the shutdown, they passed this revision in record speed, almost as quickly as they vote for pay raises for themselves.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said she would have caught the mistake but had passed the ban in a hurry, saying, “We had to pass the ban to see what it did.”

S.J. Res. 26. Passage of this resolution would overrule the EPA’s self-proclaimed power to regulate Greenhouse Gases.

A note: To those of you wishing to take action on this or any other matter concerning contact of congress or agencies:   If you use a “form” letter, no matter how many they receive….they only count it as (1).  So ten thousand could send the same letter and 9,999 are discarded and not counted if they are deemed “identical”.   Always  write your own comments and send a fax (must be kept on record for 7 years) aside from joining in these efforts.  PPJ

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The Senate will vote TODAY on resolution S.J. Res. 26. Passage of this resolution would overrule the EPA’s self-proclaimed power to regulate Greenhouse Gases.

You can find background on this issue in these Downsizer-Dispatches:

* http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/write-the-laws-act-does-the-clean-air-act-cover-greenhouse-gases
* http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/climate-change-amp-write-the-laws-act-do-you-want-bureaucrats-to-rewrite-laws

And you can read the one-paragraph resolution here.

Keep in mind that we’re not taking a position on climate science. We simply believe the EPA has no constitutional authority to regulate greenhouse gases without specific legislation from Congress. In addition, the EPA’s proposed regulations violate the intent of the Clean Air Act at the cost of harming the economy. Finally, as the letter below shows, CO2 emissions are already falling, without government involvement!

DownsizeDC.org proposed the Write the Laws Act to prevent this kind of bureaucratic mischief.