Saying that victims of last month’s Amtrak derailment must never be forgotten, dozens of U.S. congressmen are planning a memorial service that includes filling several train cars full of money and sending them into the Hudson River.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., says that while it’s still too early to know why the New York-bound train derailed, killing eight people and injuring hundreds, Congress must quickly act to scrape together a large sum of money and destroy it.
“Unless we offer a monetary sacrifice to appease supernatural forces we don’t fully understand, more accidents are inevitable,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “Personally, I throw my pocket change into a custom-built furnace in my basement, and once a week I fire that baby up.”
“And I’ve never been injured in a bicycle accident,” he added.
Democrat Chaka Fattah, who represents Pennsylvania’s second district, was more blunt.
“Engina, goddess of federally subsidized rail travel, is displeased by the congressional apostates who have slashed her funding,” Fattah said. “They must be burned along with a sum no less than 0.5 percent of projected federal revenue for 2016, or six billion dollars, whichever is greater,” he said. “Lest Engina lay waste to our whole infrastructure with a mere flick of her steely tongue.”
Some members of Congress, however, are urging prudence, saying that destroying billions of dollars of taxpayer money in an awesome spectacle sends the wrong message to constituents.
“We need to find more constructive ways to waste cash,” said Senator Bob Menendez, D-N.J. “I know these guys in Newark who do really amazing things with rolled up twenties and fifties, like build bridges and stuff. Expensive, but worth it. Strong. Pretty to look at.”
This would not be the first time money was destroyed in order to please the gods. In 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which stipulated that in order to save Wall Street from being annihilated by a massive fireball launched by minor financial services deities who inhabit the moons of Jupiter, nearly $500 billion of federal money must be burned in a giant cauldron housed inside the Treasury Department.