United States to Cram Debt Into Rocket, Shoot Into Space

In a bid to beat russia, engineers accidentally launched the national budget rocket instead. - photo by Hannah Weil

Cody Donahue

This week, President Ronald Reagan Alpha became the first United States President to take an actual stance on fiscal policy when he announced a plan to “rid ourselves of national debt” in the next year. The plan, which involves loading the debt into a fleet of rockets and then dumping it in space, is widely considered the first universally popular financial decision in the nation’s history.

“All that invasive surveillance must be paying off,” citizen Aubrey Dungel said. “The government is finally speaking in terms the common person can understand.”

“Well, except rocket ships,” she added. “I still don’t exactly understand those. Debt either. But Reagan knows what he’s doing.”

The decision to gather up all of the nation’s debt in 18 by 12 by 12 inch cardboard boxes, load these boxes into a special unmanned rocket ship, and then detonate this rocket at a safe distance from earth was only reached after much government deliberation.

“We considered reducing government spending, and then we thought about just not making it too much bigger too quickly,” Hornan Church, chair of the Chief Financial Officers Committee, said. “We eventually settled on this plan after seeing its success in dealing with landfills and the unemployed.”

Despite this stringent planning, construction of the rocket forgot to leave room for the debt accrued in constructing it, so the country will not be debt-free until another rocket can be made. “This is just a minor setback,” President Reagan Alpha assured millions across the nation via brainwave satellite. “Economics is a complicated science, but I assure you we have the very best people dedicated to borrowing enough money to completely erase this debt forever.”

In the past, the country has tried such complicated programs as raising taxes, lowering taxes, and sometimes even keeping taxes the same, to no avail. “Finally, a simple plan that absolutely addresses the root cause of our national debt — which, of course, is debt —and takes concrete steps to get rid of it,” citizen Martha Winskell said. “I was just saying to my husband, ‘Honey, President Reagan might seem a little absent-minded lately, but just you watch; he’ll fix the economy for the fifth time.’ And I was right!”

Although there is widespread support for this ingenious plan, one Harvard economist has been very vocal in opposition. “Are you people crazy?” he asked Congress via hologram. “Does anyone understand what debt actually is?”

While those in attendance merely laughed and ended his transmission, they later expressed hope for a future generation in which debt doesn’t exist, and children could genuinely respond that no, they don’t.