Deep Cuts

WASHINGTON - House Speaker John Boehner listens to aides as he discusses the Republicans plan to cut 4.9 billion in government expenditures from Medicare and Medicaid by "Driving the old people out onto the ice floes." While popular among the Tea Party contingent, the scheme has hit a major snag: most of the ice floes have melted. "We'll hold ice floe hearings soon" said Boehner, "But for now we have identified some excellent low cost alternatives: cliffs, mine shafts, quicksand." Boehner noted that quicksand's ideal but is in short supply. Framing the shortage as a 2012 campaign issue, Bohner claimed that Democrats let the strategic quicksand reserve plummet from the record levels maintained by the Bush administration, saying "Sadly, China'a now far ahead of us in the quicksand race."