An Immodest Absolutely Immoderate Proposal...

...for Preventing Progressives from Burdening the Taxpayers and Their Country While Benefitting the Public by Their Absence from Public Life.
With thanks to Jonathan Swift. No children were consumed in, or as a result of, this post.

Once principled progressives Mary Landrieu, Louisana and Ben Nelson, Nebraska pragmatically sold their Obamacare votes to Harry Reid, Nevada for $300,000,000 Medicare pads for their respective states. You see a pattern, right?

In total there were 278 progressive votes for Obamacare - House(218) Senate(60).

Our immodest proposal - assuming that Senators Landrieu and Nelson are typical of progressives in the Senate, as well as the House, and further assuming that $300,000,000 is the going rate for a progressive politician in Washington, DC - is as follows:

Offer all 278 House and Senate progressives conditional early retirement packages comprised of one-time payments of $300,000,000. This payment would naturally be subject to capital gains tax at the rate they proposed while in office, unless the prevailing rate is higher than they proposed - which is highly unlikely.

Total cost of the package to taxpayers in the United States - exactly $83,400,000,000.

The conditions attached to the package will also define some offsets, not including the election surtax, which go toward reducing the overall cost of the package. Those conditions are as follows:
Recipient waives all lifetime pension/perks associated with their service.
- waives all Social Security payments
- agrees to enroll in Medicare or their state health plan, or moves to Canada, Cuba, or England.
- assumes liability for all out-of-pocket expenses not covered by their health plan.
- signs a 25-year binding agreement barring them from seeking any elected office, anywhere.

Further cost savings can be realized in reduced jet fuel consumption, staff headcount reduction, reductions in waste, fraud and abuse, reductions in franking, deficit reduction, and by other such sums as may be required.

All that's left is to find sponsors for the bill. Senators Boxer, Landrieu, Nelson and Reid and Representatives Lincoln, Pelosi, Brady, Frank, Hoyer and Markey can carry the bill in their respective chambers. Mr. Markey's global warming committee won't get a chance at this one.

Once the proposal has been scored by CBO and returned to both the House and Senate, we can then expect a quick, near-unanimous vote in both chambers, because as Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Christopher Dodd and Harry Reid have all clearly demonstrated, every progressive has their price.

While $83,400,000,000 may seem like a large sum of money, it is:
2.38% of President Obama's proposed $3,500,000,000,000 proposed Federal budget for 2010.
1.67% of the 10-year estimated $5,000,000,000,000 cost of Obamacare and cap-and-trade.

Beyond the obvious benefit to the economy and the taxpayers, consider this:
Eliminating the single greatest domestic threat to the Republic - PRICELESS!!!!

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - but 278 progressives are cheap at twice the price....