By Ford T. Aytt
True Dork Times Divisive Politics Editor

WASHINGTON, D.C. (TDT)  Government insiders report that, in seeking relief from a deepening economic downturn, White House and Congressional leaders are taking a cue from major league baseball.  Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirm that the government is considering "folding... at least two" habitually underperforming U.S. states, in the interest of preserving the long-term prosperity of the nation as a whole.  While no official decision has yet been made on which states will be disbanded, sources report that Arkansas is a "virtual certainty," with several other states' futures being fiercely debated.

While details are currently sketchy, due to a uniformly-observed official silence on the matter, sources claim the concept originated in the White House, but had been limited to Arkansas.  Democrats claim this was originally intended as punishment to the state for the birth, governorship, and rise to national prominence of Bill Clinton.  "But after thinking about it for a few minutes," one high-ranking Democratic Representative told the True Dork Times, "we realized it was actually a pretty good idea."

House versions of the plan apparently include just Arkansas, which ranks at the bottom of almost every statistic, from quality of education to income to ability to tie shoelaces together.  A bill prescribing the action apparently sailed through the chamber with little dissent from either party.  The Senate, however, decided to put its own imprimatur on the legislation, and concluded that at least one more state must be done away with, both for balance on the flag, and also to act as a "greater stimulus" for an economic turnaround.  Which state that second one will be, however, is far from certain.

One Senate staffer recounted fierce negotiations within the upper chamber.  "First, we had to get out the official Congressional Atlas just to make sure West Virginia was actually a state to begin with.  Yeah, Robert Byrd put up a fuss, but he's old, and he's always blabbering on about history or something like that, so most of us don't even listen to him anymore.  Later, once we got down to business, pretty much everyone agreed right away that Arkansas had to go.  But then the real trouble started."

According to several eyewitness accounts, a small number of legislators had to be physically restrained as two competing proposals were hotly debated.  One, backed by a coalition of Southern and Midwest conservatives, targeted California as the remaining state to be ousted, citing the Golden State's perennially lackluster school test scores, problems with illegal immigration, and general "communist tendencies," in the words of Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R, MS).

California shot back that it had the seventh-largest economy in the world, and that if the "mouthbreathers in Mississippi don't like us, maybe we should take our tax dollars elsewhere, and see how you like it when you can't use government handouts to buy your moonshine."  This led to a brief tussle as Lott made an obscene gesture in the direction of Democratic California Senator Barbara Boxer. Boxer, in turn, lobbed a shoe at Lott's head, which it missed by several yards, and instead impaled an already-comatose Strom Thurmond (R, SC), who had just been wheeled in for his daily waving-and-drooling photo-op.

In the equally contentious competing bill, New York and New England-based Senators recommended that Florida be dropped from the Union, specifying "problems too numerous to list completely," but including the continued existence of Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Janet Reno, and Elian Gonzales' Miami relatives.  They also cited, as an example, "the music: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Limp Bizkit, Creed, N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys.  Need we say more?"

In the end, both California and Florida were recognized, by voice vote, to contribute substantially to the national economy, and attention eventually focused on removing either Mississippi or Alabama.  Lott vowed that ouster of either of these states, traditional Republican strongholds, would be over his dead body.  Boxer suggested that "that eventuality could be arranged."  While insiders are convinced that some compromise will eventually be reached, none appears on the immediate horizon.

Senate sources also privately acknowledge that, should this initial round of contraction fail to produce the financial windfall experts are predicting, a second round of cuts may be necessary. "We're not really sure we need both a North and a South Dakota, and we doubt anybody would notice if we just stopped delivering mail to Idaho or Montana," confirmed a Senator from a Mid-Atlantic state.  Meanwhile, appropriations have already been made for Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Missouri to erect huge walls, to be manned by armed sentries, along their borders with Arkansas.  "We just don't want their kind spilling over onto our soil," one Missouri Congressman acknowledged, gravely.

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