As the 114th Congress convenes this week with a Republican "working" majority, one of their top priorities -- the GOP says -- is to create jobs.
And in order to create those millions of jobs, the GOP will make it a first order of business... no, not to fix our crumbling infrastructure. That is because repairing our failing infrastructure would create only a measly "2.7 million jobs across the economy and [only] increase the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $377 billion" while allegedly reducing carbon pollution, other greenhouse gas emissions and supposedly reducing the impacts of climate change.
No, the first order of business will be to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that will create a gargantuan 2,500 to 4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years.
But wait, there is more, once the project is completed, the State Department estimates that the pipeline would create an immense number of full time jobs: 35 of them, well worth the potential environmental damage that could arise because "Canadian tar sands oil is more carbon intensive than other types of oil, and harder than conventional oil to clean up when it spills," as thinkprogress.org asserts.
Fortunately, in his latest report, Andy Borowitz assures us that there is light at the end of the jobs tunnel.
Even if President Obama nixes the 35 full-time jobs the Keystone XL project would create, almost twice as many workers -- 64 of them -- will start new jobs in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday "as part of a federal jobs program that provides employment for people unable to find productive work elsewhere."
Borowitz:
The new hires, who have no talents or abilities that would make them employable in most workplaces, will be earning a first-year salary of $174,000.
.For that sum, the new employees will be expected to work a hundred and thirty-seven days a year, leaving them with two hundred and twenty-eight days of vacation.
.
Some critics have blasted the federal jobs program as too expensive, noting that the workers were chosen last November in a bloated and wasteful selection process that cost the nation nearly four billion dollars.
.
But Davis Logsdon, a University of Minnesota economics professor who specializes in labor issues, said that the program is necessary to provide work "for people who honestly cannot find employment anywhere else."
.
"Expensive as this program is, it is much better to have these people in jobs than out on the street," he said.
You guessed it, these 64 new, unskilled workers are our brand-new legislators in the 114th Congress who will join the rest of their more accomplished and sagacious "can-do" pals to provide a tremendous boost to the economy -- 35 new full-time jobs -- by passing that vital pipeline project.