119th Not-Congress — 1st Session of Futility
Real bills. Real absurdity. Satirical common sense.
Real legislation from Congress, ranked by absurdity
The spending bill that blocked USDA reforms and effectively kept pizza counted as a vegetable serving in school lunches. Because two tablespoons of tomato paste is basically a salad.
The 2005 transportation bill included a $223 million earmark for a bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 8,900) to Gravina Island (pop. 50). Fifty people. A $223 million bridge. For fifty people.
The 119th Congress adopted rules clarifying that 'each day' does not mean 'each calendar day' — codifying the long-standing fiction that a single 'legislative day' can span weeks or months. Congressional time is not real time.
Satirical bills that actually make sense — fresh from the floor (or possibly the floor drain)
Makes it a federal misdemeanor to use the 'Reply All' function unnecessarily in government email systems, punishable by mandatory email etiquette training and public shaming.
Allocates $42 million in federal funding for interdisciplinary research into the meaning of life, including mandatory 'existential crisis days' for all federal employees.
Requires all federal legislation to be written in plain English that a reasonably literate eighth-grader could understand, because apparently that needed to be a law.
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