Citing concerns over budgetary bloat and the preservation of long-standing biological communities, the House Appropriations Committee formally declined to address the General Services Administration’s deferred maintenance requests.
WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan consensus aimed at avoiding a $50 billion appropriations bill, congressional leadership announced Tuesday that the vast networks of rats, raw sewage leaks, and broken elevators currently plaguing federal buildings have been officially reclassified as load-bearing infrastructure.
According to a 400-page assessment authored by the Congressional Budget Office, extracting the estimated 300,000 rodents from the ceiling of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building would risk catastrophic structural collapse. The report noted that the compacted nests of shredded tax forms and chewed electrical wiring have successfully insulated the facility since 1993, while the calcified rust from decades of unchecked water damage is currently the only material holding the sub-basement together.
If we start fixing every single elevator that plunges three floors in freefall before the emergency brakes catch, we send a message to the American taxpayer that Washington is a place of luxury and coddling.
Sources close to the caucus confirmed that addressing the pervasive water damage at the State Department would require the arduous process of passing a funding resolution, a legislative maneuver described by senior aides as "completely off the table." Instead, the General Services Administration has been instructed by committee mandate to reclassify the fourth-floor ceiling leaks as seasonal indoor wetlands, seamlessly aligning the deferred maintenance with federal environmental preservation goals.
The committee concluded the session by issuing a joint resolution commending the feral cats living in the basement of the Internal Revenue Service headquarters for their tireless, unpaid service in keeping the rat population from breaching the cafeteria. The resolution noted that the feline workforce remains entirely exempt from federal pension requirements, ensuring the structural integrity of the executive branch remains strictly budget-neutral.