Georgetown University, spearheaded by the government department, has recently announced their own version of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The university hopes Congress will take its vast expertise on budgetary issues seriously and use its blueprint as a reference point for President Biden’s stimulus package. Here are some of the highlights:
The government department’s first priority is to allocate $30 billion in funding for a nationwide “How are you doing?” email blast from Robert M. Groves to every citizen’s inbox. Seeing as the 2020 Census was a hot mess, they are advising to tap Groves, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, to head the new Department of Surveys, a cabinet-level position that will replace the Census Bureau as the main information-gathering agency for the government. After the smashing success of the surveys sent to Georgetown students, Congress should see the emails as a way to cut costs, streamline and modernize the government’s data collection agency. Democrats and Republicans were not able to agree on the frequency of the email blasts, so they compromised and chose to send it out bimonthly.
As part of President Biden’s promise to lower the cost of higher education, Georgetown advises to spend $90 billion of targeted funding dedicated to forgiving student loan debt, but only for business major students. Centrists were hesitant to forgive all student loan debt given the hefty price tag and catastrophic damage it would cause on the U.S. economy, so centrists did what they do best: settle on a compromise that left no one happy. Business majors understand more than literally anyone else how bad it could be to the economy to forgive all student loan debts, so they are willing to shoulder this incredible burden. The remaining 98% of people still paying off their student loan debt will be outraged but also unsurprised, the department speculates.
After days of negotiating with NHS students, the government department has advised the U.S. government to put $7 billion toward the splitting of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services into the U.S. Department of Health and Department of Nursing. The split should be expected to occur in July 2022. Given that we are currently in a global pandemic, it is wise to split the job of the HHS into two separate, but functionally identical, departments.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should stay vastly underfunded, seeing as Georgetown University has gotten away with charging record-setting tuition without improving its dorms. This policy of raising prices arbitrarily, while promising no improvements, worked for Georgetown and thus should be adopted nationwide. In order to mirror Georgetown’s model, the government department is issuing guidance to raise property taxes on low-income people while also promising to dedicate zero funds for public housing improvements.
One of the more controversial suggestions laid out by Georgetown, but garnered praise from President Biden, was a $69 billion fund to place a cross in every room in every federal building. The Senate parliamentarian gave their stamp of approval for the measure, citing divine intervention as having a major impact on the budget. “Where do you think all the money we’re printing is coming from? God,” the parliamentarian was quoted saying over the weekend. While gaining bipartisan support from liberal artists and religious conservatives, the measure is not expected to stay in the stimulus package.
