(SATIRE) http://thedesperateblogger.com/2010/03/bun... /

Republican leaders hailed Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning this morning for breaking his own logjam on extending unemployment benefits to hundreds of thousands of the long-term unemployed by introducing an amendment to the bill which, in the words of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “will help produce new generations of fiscally responsible Americans.”

The amendment would effectively bar the White House, as well as any other entity receiving federal funding, from using taxpayer dollars to fund annual ‘Easter Egg Rolls’ as well as other ‘holiday government giveaways’.

Bunning, who has often been at odds with members of his own party for what is perceived as his standing on their shallow principles to the point of utter disregard for poll numbers and election cycles — and last Friday may have jeopardized close elections for many in the GOP by citing core Republican values as his reason for preventing the vote to extend unemployment benefits and tax subsidies for COBRA — characterized his last-minute amendment as “a measure that will help break the vicious cycle of dependency on the government.”

House Majority Leader, John Boehner, who in the past has often attended the annual Easter Egg Roll in order to work on his tan, was one of the many to heap praise on Senator Bunning for his innovative compromise solution. “This is the best game Senator Bunning has pitched since that ‘perfecto’ against Seattle in 1968,” Boehner told reporters in an apparent reference to the Baseball Hall of Famer’s 1964 perfect game against the New York Mets. “How are we supposed to teach kids about personal responsibility when the President and First Lady are out there playing Easter Bunny and giving unnecessary, taxpayer-funded handouts?”

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who was reportedly overheard telling colleagues, “If Obama insists on having his Easter Egg Roll, it will be his Waterloo,” later told a press gathering, “Americans now realize that they have two clear choices. They can go with the Democrat party and perpetuate the socialistic culture of big government, big handouts, and big deficits, or, they can go with the party that tells their kids, ‘no big government, no big deficits, no Easter Bunny, no Santa Claus’. I think the American people know what matters most to their kids.”

Those sentiments were echoed by conservative radio pundit and porcine pill-popper Rush Limbaugh, who vocally lauded Bunning’s amendment, telling his audience, “There’s a reason Santa wears red, you know, and it’s not to camouflage his pink, drunk-on-wasteful-spending nose, comrades.”